


A Rose in the Darkness

by BrideofCrixus



Category: Bane - Fandom, Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman Bane, The Dark Knight Rises
Genre: Assault, Death, F/M, Oral Sex, Sex, Violence, smoking and everything that possibly offends everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 47,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24365356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrideofCrixus/pseuds/BrideofCrixus
Summary: Rose is less than two weeks from her 18th birthday. Her and her three friends are at the mall while Bane blows up the football stadium and kills Dr. Pavel.Rose's friend's jaywalk and then she meets Bane.This takes place after Bane has destroyed the football stadium, it loosely follows and references TDKR. Talia/Miranda, Bruce/Batman and other TDKR characters make appearances also.Thank you for reading
Relationships: Bane (DCU)/Original Female Character(s), Bane and oc, Bane/Miranda Tate, Bane/Talia al Ghul, Bruce Wayne and Miranda Tate
Comments: 40
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

Rose stirred from her unconscious state, her mind slowly swimming to the surface. She kept her eyes closed and listened through the spikes of pain that pierced her head, to the conversation taking place at her right side. 

The cultured voice of a woman reached her ears first. “She may possess some temporary value.”

“What would you like done with her?” asked a fear invoking, strangely melodic voice. 

“Make her fear you before she loves you. Then break her. Fast,” came the eloquent syllables which caused her to suppress a chilling shiver as the woman’s voice added. “Kill her slowly. Only after you have exploited every piece of knowledge and information from her.”

She listened as silence blanketed the room as the woman with the clear annunciation and the mechanically toned man stopped speaking. 

“I have to go,” the woman’s voice announced suddenly. She nearly flinched at the close proximity of the voice. 

“I’m hosting a benefit tonight and Miranda Tate needs to look her best in case there is a rarely seen attendee.”

She listened as the sound of the woman’s boots receded, but she knew the male was still in the room. She could feel the weight of his gaze as she became aware of how dry her throat was. She struggled to not cough, her mouth was nearly devoid of saliva and she felt pain radiating around the circumference of her slim neck. The back of her head was partially numb, and she desperately wanted to reach up and feel along her neck and scalp.

“How is this even happening?” she thought as a steady ache seemed to fill her head like a bloated balloon and press inside every nook and cranny of her brain. 

She let out a slow and controlled breath when she heard the sound of heavy footsteps exiting and fade from her hearing’s capability of detection. “Maybe this is a really, really vivid dream,” she thought with a very faint amount of delusional hope.

“You’re going to wake up and be back at home. There are some freezer burned waffles in the freezer and a whole bottle of syrup in the cupboard,” she thought and cracked her eyes open into a thin line.

It was too painful to turn her head to either side but if the walls looked anything like the ceiling there was certainly nothing wonderful to see and write home about. Overhead was smooth grey concrete, randomly dripping fat drops of water from the condensation.

There was a dim light from somewhere nearby and she strained her hears when she heard the same heavy footsteps approaching. 

“What went wrong with today to end up here?” she thought as the heavy footsteps stopped and were closely followed by the creaking protests of a chair as the man sat. 

~ Twelve Hours Earlier-Downtown Mall in Gotham City ~ 

Rose trailed behind her trio of friends; her feet trudged over the scuffed tiles of the large shopping mall in downtown Gotham. The mall’s bright blue logo was emblazoned proudly on random tiles as she skipped to catch up with her gaggle of girlfriends. 

Rose paused to check the time on her phone before heading towards her friends. Jayne, Caroline and Kylie were all crowded around a bin of lingerie at a sexy boutique whose product lines prominently featured sinfully sheer silk and buttery soft satin.

The girls had collectively planned this shopping trip for much needed undergarments for the upcoming senior prom which was less than two weeks away as well as Rose’s 18th birthday just a hair past that. 

Rose gave a low sigh as she approached the group of girls who were digging through plastic panty bin after colorful bin. Each extracted pieces of lingerie that consisted of even less fabric than the piece before. 

Rose wondered how she had even become friends with these girls. Her thoughts were interrupted when a swatch of satin bounced lightly off her chest. “Hey Rosie, catch!” Kylie laughed and tossed another scant pair of fluorescent pink panties at Rose. 

Rose caught the panties from the air and blushed when Kylie added. “I bet Kev will love pulling those off,” she cackled. 

“He better show up this time,” Caroline threw in as Kylie trailed off into a case of the giggles.

Rose looked down at the bin of minimal fabric. The “Kev” in question was Kevin Nielson who was the supposed guy that Rose had met on an online dating site. This was also the same Kev that Rose had supposedly hopped under the bed covers with and gave up her “V” card. 

Rose tossed the panties back in the bin and plucked out an even more risqué pair. A small triangle of teal silk was all that obscured one’s femininity from gaze or caress. “These are more Kev’s style,” Rose laughed as she held up the barely there panties. 

The girl’s all dissolved into giggles as they continued with their ever perpetual and painfully predictable topics of conversation about sex and everything you’d ever want to know about guys and their dicks. 

Caroline turned to Rose, “so what’s Kevin packing downstairs?”

Rose stammered nervously, “he’s good.”

Kylie laughs, “oh the first one never has any flaws. You just wait Rosie until you’ve played around with a few other dicks,” Kylie said drawing out the two syllables in “Rosie.”

Rose blushed and bit her tongue to keep from telling her to quit using that hated nickname. 

Rose finally selected and purchased a pair of the overpriced silken scraps as she worked on a believable excuse for Kev’s absence from the upcoming prom. “It should be easy,” she thought and frowned as her thoughts grew more anxiety ridden. “But, I can ’t very well say that I made him up so you guys would stop teasing me about still being a virgin.”

“I could go for a coffee,” Caroline announced as she stifled a yawn and Rose was more than thankful for the change in conversation. 

The quartet of girls rode the escalator down to the ground floor of the mall to a nationwide chain coffeehouse. They met a healthy line of people waiting and Jayne let out a dramatic groan as she pulled out a small mirror and checked her makeup.

Rose watched from the very rear of the line as Jayne brushed a stray eyelash off the overly tanned skin of her cheek. After she was satisfied with her face, Jayne turned her attention to her brunette hair. She pushed a few wispy strands behind her ear and slipped the mirror back into her designer bag. 

Rose hid a smile as Jayne tugged down at the hem of her very tight skirt, the fabric ended more than halfway up her bronze colored thighs and she had paired it with tall shiny, black boots. 

Caroline was checking her phone as she stood behind Jayne in line. Rose watched her smooth forehead pull into a crease as she shoved the phone to the depths of her faded leather bag. 

“What’s wrong?” Kylie whispered loudly before Rose could inquire about what had pulled Caroline’s features into a frown. 

“Oh, it’s my stupid fucking stepdad,” Caroline practically spit as the line moved forward a couple feet. 

“What’d he say?” Rose asked as she leaned forward and watched Caroline roll her bright green eyes within their fringe of dark eyelashes. 

“He said that terrorists blew up the football stadium during the game and some other bullshit about a bomb and the world ending,” Caroline said and added as the other girl’s started to laugh. “He said I have to come home now.” 

Rose shook her head; Caroline’s stepfather was a Protestant minister and had theories for days on fire and brimstone raining down on all the unrepentant sinners and heretics. 

“Are you going to answer him?” Rose asked and was immediately met with a glare from Kylie. 

“Fuck him,” Caroline said and pulled a crisp ten from her wallet as it neared her time to order.

“Yeah Rosie, I’m sure you’d just drop everything and run home if mommy and daddy said so,” Kylie said with a nasty sneer. 

“That’s not true,” Rose said defensively as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Kylie just arched a perfectly shaped filled in dark blonde eyebrow and went to the counter and ordered her soy sugar-free vanilla nut latte with no foam. 

Rose stared daggers at Kylie’s back and her long hair that fell in loose waves to the waistband of her charcoal grey slacks. Kylie slipped a green credit card from the breast pocket of her burgundy blouse and passed it to the coffee house staff. 

After Kylie folded her printed receipt around the plastic money and replaced it in her pocket, Rose stepped up to order a hazelnut mocha with extra whipped cream.

The girl’s waited in a silent half-circle as their deep, rich espresso brewed and whipped cream was gratuitously splashed on scalding nonfat and soy milk. Their eyes were all glued to the square brightly lit screens on their smart phone’s.

“Todd is unbelievable,” Caroline whined and turned her phone around so that everyone could read the screen. 

“It is not safe on the streets. I’m coming down to the mall to pick you up. Be at the south entrance, I’ll drop the other girl’s off at their homes.”

As the girl’s collected their hot drinks, Kylie spoke up in her fast and excitable tone. “Let’s get outta here, I’m not going home now.” 

The girl’s looked at each other and a slow smile filled Caroline’s lips. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Rose clutched her soothing mocha and jogged to catch up with the retreating female trio. 

As the four girls hurried across the ground floor of the mall and left through the east exit and spilled into the street. Nearby, Bane and his deadly minions had left the football stadium filled with the frightened Gothamites and were driving down the streets which were becoming more and more chaotic. 

Barsad sat behind the wheel of the steel panel reinforced truck. Bane sat silently in the passenger seat and scrutinized the floundering citizens of Gotham that were panicking with the smoky haze that was rising in the clear afternoon sky. 

Bane turned his head sharply to the left when Barsad swore loudly and slammed the truck’s brake to the floor as the running girls were suddenly in the middle of the street. 

The truck’s brakes squealed and protested as they expelled an odor of burnt rubber but finally came to a screeching halt as a high scream sounded after the meaty thud of a body bending and breaking. 

Barsad and Bane climbed out of the truck’s cab and walked towards the steel grey front bumper.

As Barsad had been steering the massive vehicle down the road, Rose and her trio of gal pals had run from the mall’s exit to the corner of the street.

Caroline had depressed the dull, round cross walk button and Kylie’s impatience wore thin as they waited for the little green man to give them visual permission to continue walking. 

“It’s clear,” Kylie said as she started to walk across the street. Caroline hesitated a second and Jayne a beat more before following Kylie. 

Rose stood on the corner with her half-consumed cooling mocha, she looked to the right as the truck Barsad was driving came out of a side street and accelerated over the pavement. 

“Hey, there’s a truck coming,” Rose called to the girls backs. 

“They’ll stop, I’m the goddamn pedestrian here,” Kylie called over her shoulder. 

Rose watched in what seemed slow motion as the imposing steel vehicle did indeed stop but only after Kylie served as an impromptu crash test dummy. Rose dropped her 75% recycled material cup to the ground and ran towards the smoking tires. She wasn’t even aware of the driver and passenger side doors opening as she reached the front of the truck and crashed heavily to the unforgiving pitted surface of the street. 

Caroline’s full and pouty lips fell open and a low moan began to sound. 

By the time Rose could see that Kylie was more than dead, Caroline was screaming hysterically. 

Jayne looked down at Kylie’s broken body and watched as Rose felt around the skin of her neck for a pulse. As Rose felt for any signs of life, she wondered if it was better that she wasn’t finding any. 

Kylie’s body looked like it had been bent out of shape and then crudely put back together. She had been reduced to a sort of remade play dough figure in the caricature of a female.

As Caroline screeched and Jayne remained speechless, Bane looked down at Rose who was still kneeling by Kylie’s body. 

“You killed her,” Rose sputtered as she climbed to her feet. 

Bane turned the full weight of his gaze upon her and she struggled to not look away. 

Rose failed after just under three seconds of eye contact. “You killed her,” she whispered as she stared down at the toes of her shoes. 

“Kill one man and you’re a murderer,” Bane replied, and Rose looked up at him startled by the haunting musical tone of his voice. 

A trembling began to spread throughout her body, and she felt rooted in place on the cracked black asphalt as he advanced towards her and continued to speak. “Kill a million and you’re a conqueror.” 

Rose’s chest was tight and her eyes far too wide as Bane leaned down and spoke low enough for only her ears.

“Kill them all and you’re a god.”


	2. Calm Yourself

Rose felt like her eyes were going to fall out of the confines of her eyelids, but she still couldn’t look away from the masked man’s startling eyes. His orbital sockets boasted lens of stunning and seemingly endless abysmal depths. 

Bane returned her frightened gaze as the black pupils of her eyes shrank to pinpoints against their hazel backdrop. 

“Put them in the car,” Bane said loudly. It was only then he freed Rose from his penetrating gaze and her eyes darted to the group of men that were suddenly standing around them. 

All of them were armed to some degree with either high-powered automatic weaponry or steel buck knives. 

Rose could see that several other reinforced trucks had pulled up behind the massive man that was still casting his shadow over her. 

A couple of the hard-looking men stepped forward and grabbed a hold of Jayne and Caroline by their soft upper arms and began dragging them towards the other vehicles. 

Rose was too scared to struggle when one of the anonymous men grasped her and began to tug her towards a nearby overhauled paneled van. 

“I will take that one,” Bane said in an unreadable yet musically melodic tone to the haggard man with the diagonal scar that bisected his lower lip. The nameless but loyal man released Rose’s arm and pushed her towards Bane when she remained rooted in place as rigid as a one-hundred-year-old majestic and stoic redwood tree.

Rose’s chest tightened and her bladder suddenly felt too full when she felt his substantial hand close around the smooth skin of her forearm. She held her breath when she felt his rough palm and calloused fingertips press into the supple flesh below her elbow. 

“Dispose of that,” Bane directed at a skinny man in ill-fitting camouflage fatigues.

Rose tore her attention from the touch of the strong man’s grip and looked over to where the soldier of fortune lifted Kylie’s broken body from the asphalt and carried her towards the cracked concrete curb. 

“You can’t just leave her there,” slipped from Rose’s chapped lips as she continued to watch the man dump the tangled form of Kylie on the sidewalk. 

Rose felt tears well behind her eyes as she watched Kylie flop to the ground, resembling more of a retired marionette puppet than a human being. 

“I can,” Bane said and pulled her roughly with him towards the passenger side of the truck. Rose had to hurry to keep up with his long stride and he never released her even as he opened the heavy truck door. 

A surprised squeal fell from Rose’s lips when the masked man lifted her onto the leather seat. She didn’t have much room to scoot over when he joined her on the smooth seat and slammed the door. 

Barsad steered the large truck through downtown Gotham. Besides the sound of the large diesel engines upon acceleration, the truck cab was blanketed in silence. 

Rose sat stiffly on her section of the passenger seat next to Bane. As much as Rose was nervous about riding without a seatbelt, the idea of wearing one was out of the question when she realized how much closer she would be to him than she already was. 

She looked out of the corner of her eye when she saw the imposing man pull a stack of pages from the inside pocket of his wool lined collared coat. Rose squinted at the pages and realized it was written in French. She currently had a nice, fat D in that class. Miss Vigneron warned that she needed to get at least a B on the final exam, or she would fail the class and need to complete summer classes before she could get her diploma. 

Rose let her gaze trail over his fingertips with their blunt nails and over the top of his hand which was partially obscured by worn black gloves. Her eyes ran up the length of his   
jacket encased arm and to the uncovered and warm colored skin of his muscular neck. 

Rose tilted her head slightly to get a better view and scrutinized the metallic tubes of his mask. Each coil gleamed dully in the light of the truck cab. She let her eyes wander across the exposed skin under his eyes and found a plethora of scars everywhere she trailed her gaze. 

Barsad turned the wheel sharply to the left and Rose was thrown heavily against Bane’s side. 

Bane’s body was hard and unyielding as Rose fell against him. She struggled to move back but was met with the obstacle of the console and wasn’t able to put much space between them. 

Her senses were overwhelmed when she caught his scent of leather and sweat all floating on a sea of distinct masculinity. Rose had pushed away with her right hand and she could still feel the phantom memory of his hard and molded flesh under her fingers. 

Rose peeked up at him from under her line of inky black eyelashes and found his eyes already on her. She again felt the stranglehold of paralysis fill her body and spread throughout each limb and nerve-ending. 

For a long moment, the masked man stared down at her and regarded her with pregnant curiosity before speaking from behind his mask. 

Rose pressed her dry lips together as his spoken syllables rained down around her. 

“Calm yourself young one or you can join your friend back there.” As Bane spoke, his partially gloved hand pulled the truck door open a crack.

Rose began to hear the wind whistling. She felt her face lose color in a hurry when the whistling sound increased as Barsad pressed the accelerator to the floor. 

“Right now,” Bane said before adding in a mechanical tone. “Do you feel you can control and conduct yourself in a proper manner.” 

Rose nodded emphatically but silent. Fear had paralyzed her vocal cords.

Bane regarded her for a few moments as he pulled the truck door closed. She was finally able to take a normal breath as Barsad released some of his pressure on the accelerator.

As Rose’s color attempted to return to its regular state, Bane captured her eyes with his intent gaze. He found no reflection of darkness as the moments he would share with Talia’s gaze. 

“This girl,” Bane thought as his eyes seemed to pierce through the back of her skull after weaving throughout her optical nerves. 

“She hasn’t been born in the darkness, swaddled in crude sheets of scratchy burlap. She hasn’t been nursed at the breasts of despair while suckling the milk of suffering. Her life sustained only by hope.”

Bane continued to observe that she had stopped squirming and held her shoulders back stiffly. His thought before turning his eyes back to the grimy windshield, was that her eyes were innocent and spoke millions of unasked questions. Each one would have been based in the naivete of a charmed and sheltered life.

Rose suppressed a shiver when she heard the capacity for violence staining his voice. 

The rest of the ride to Wayne Enterprises that Bane and his men had commandeered was quiet as Rose tried to disappear into the lining of the seat. She felt her body cramping as she tried to curl inside herself and not allow any part of her body to brush against the man in the metallic mask that hinted at a fearsome masquerade. He hailed from a place where the shadows had bodies and exhaled detritus that had teeth. 

Rose was grateful when the truck pulled to a stop and the engine was cut. She watched as the masked man opened his door and stepped out of the truck. He made movements to also pull her from the truck and she squirmed out of his grasp and hopped to the ground. Rose winced as her legs felt full of pins and needles from holding so much tension and being cramped throughout the truck ride. 

She didn’t have any time to walk off the discomfort as the large man gripped her upper arm firmly and pulled her towards a poorly lit metal staircase that descended into a dim void. Rose caught the faint stench of stagnant black water the further the large man led her. 

Rose desperately wanted to question the hulking man who yanked her though narrow hallways and finally to a partially open door emitting a faint spill of wan, yellow light.

Rose was instantly relieved when she saw Jayne and Caroline sitting close together in a bare and damp corner. Bane deposited Rose alongside her two friends before exiting the room, leaving them with three heavily armed men who had hooded dark eyes. 

“Are you okay?” Rose asked the girls when they were reunited. Jayne’s skin was too pale and sweaty while Caroline’s eyes were fuchsia and swollen from her nearly constant state of crying. 

Rose, Jayne and Caroline huddled together as Caroline’s eyes threatened to release another torrential flood of salty tears. 

Rose and the other girls weren’t paying much attention when one of the three armed men crossed the room and shut and locked the door. 

Caroline’s tear ducts sprang back to life in a hurry when the unnamed man with a head of unruly dark hair grabbed a fistful of Rose’s black hair. 

Rose’s scream, which was born in fear, quickly died in her throat when she felt the cool metal of a blade kiss the smooth olive skin of her neck. “Be in silence,” the man said calmly in broken English. 

Rose froze as the man released his hand from her hair but kept the blade at her neck. She was painfully aware of the blade’s position directly above her rapidly beating carotid pulse. 

Jayne’s belly clenched and rapidly ejected its contents onto her lap. Her lunch of alfredo and garlic bread burned a path up her esophagus. She had another crippling wave of nausea as the regurgitated odor of her Caesar salad assaulted her nose. 

Jayne expelled long threads of saliva that fell from her lips as the nameless and hard looking man again closed his hand in Rose’s hair and pulled, making her struggle to her feet. 

He pressed the blade to Rose’s neck and forced her to face him. Rose’s fright became nearly tangible as the man ripped open her dark blue button-down blouse. 

Rose wrinkled her nose with disgust as one of her blouse’s navy-blue buttons landed with a sick plop in a puddle of Jayne’s partially digested apple cobbler dessert.

“Shut them up,” the anonymous man ordered at the other two heavily armed men. One man clapped a hand over Caroline’s mouth to silence her continual cries and the other slammed the butt of his gun against Jayne’s skull and she slumped forward into unconsciousness. 

Rose started to move back and shouted again when the man stepped forward and pressed the blade harder until it lightly broke her delicate skin.

“Shhh,” he whispered as he licked away the small line of blood that stained her neck. “Be in god damned silence,” he said dangerously.

Rose struggled to not scream when the man trailed the knife over the creamy skin of her upper chest and dipped into the smooth valley of skin between her breasts. “This is nice. Did you pick this out for me?” he asked rhetorically as he traced the wickedly sharp blade along her sky-blue bra. 

Rose didn’t have time to scream as the man dropped the knife and his other hand curled into a fist and shot out and punched the soft flesh of her belly. Her breath left her lungs in   
a hurry and she dropped heavily to her knees, not even aware of the concrete floor biting into the skin of her knees through her slacks. 

Rose pathetically tried to crawl away, she struggled to let out a strangled groan when the man grabbed one of her ankles and pulled her forcefully towards him. She kicked out with her free foot and he easily caught it in motion.

Rose’s heartbeat thundered in her ears and she managed a louder shout when the sound was abruptly stifled by the grimy hand of the other nameless man who had rendered Jayne unconscious. 

The nameless man grinned down at her, revealing an uneven row of yellowed and tobacco stained teeth. 

“Are you going to play nice?” the guy spit at her, his breath repugnant as it washed over her face.

Rose managed a nod with the pressure of his hand, and he lifted his dirt stained palm away from her mouth. 

She felt the original attacker’s fingers struggling at the button of her slacks and she closed her eyes and somehow found a reserve of courage and opened her eyes to look up at him. 

The man paused his hand’s movements at Rose’s whispering, he strained his ears as she continued to speak under her breath. He leaned closer to hear what she was saying. As he brought his ear closer to her mouth, she used every ounce of strength remaining in her body to reach her arms up and around his neck and shoulders. 

The man paused at her sudden touch and ignorantly misread her actions as being agreeable and waving the white flag of surrender. He started to chuckle as Rose brought her lips to the warm skin of his neck. 

The man’s laugh was snuffed out and diminished as quickly as it was born when she pulled her lips back from her gums and sunk her teeth into his neck.   
Rose increased the pressure of her teeth on the would-be rapist’s neck. She mercilessly ground her teeth together and tore through the sinuous muscle fibers. Rose felt a flood of the sickeningly sweet metallic taste of fresh, warm blood fill her mouth as her sharp incisors sharply tore into his carotid artery. 

The man shouted a slew of what sounded like obscenities in a language she didn’t recognize apart from watching international news coverage on TV. His hands scrabbled at her face and neck as he tried to pry her jaw from his neck. She clenched her jaw and felt the spray of dark arterial blood splash along her smooth and unmarred skin. 

His strength waned as his life blood sweetly spilled from his spurting artery as he got a fairly decent grasp on the sides of her face. Rose shook her head viscously, tearing loose small bits of flesh that landed with a wet plop on the cold surface of the concrete floor. 

Small cracks in the cement, swallowed the blood with the intimacy of a lover. The man pulled Rose away from his neck and had enough residual strength to smash her head back against the ground. She felt pain shoot through her skull when her head made contact, but she managed to bring one hand up to the man’s face and scrape her long and rounded fingernails down his dirty cheek. 

The second man grabbed her wrists and held them down against the ground as the other clamped a hand to his hemorrhaging neck. His vision danced with spots of bright colors as his heart pumped more blood from his gaping and ragged wound. 

The third man that held Caroline flush against his chest watched on with rapt fascination and twisted voyeurism and a painfully erect cock that Caroline could feel through her clothes. 

Rose watched as her chest heaved as the first man fell backwards and struggled to get back to his feet. He miserably failed as blood poured through the webbings of his scarred fingers as Rose and the others watched as his life ended. 

Rose looked up at the man who had her wrists pinned to the cold concrete. He narrowed his eyes as he returned her gaze, her mouth was bathed with blood and other thicker clumps. She had no time to think about defending herself when he swiftly let go of her wrists and gripped both sides of her face. 

Rose’s consciousness diminished as though a light switch was flicked off as he lifted her head and smashed it on the unforgiving ground. 

The second man lifted his eyes to the door when he heard the deliberate and slow staccato clapping of hands. 

He looked up to see Talia standing there bringing her hands together with premeditated slowness. 

The man jumped up as he saw Bane standing behind Talia. He had his hands loosely gripped at the collar of his coat. 

“Good show,” Talia said with an icy tone as she stepped closer and looked down at Rose and then over to the man she had killed by exsanguination.


	3. A Few Tweaks

Before Rose had bit through her would-be rapist’s neck and caused his heart to pump all his precious pints of blood to splash on the damp, concrete floor, Talia had thought Rose held zero value and was ready to have her killed and tossed in the incinerator. 

Talia’s opinion wavered when she witnessed Rose’s justifiable homicide. She looked at Jayne’s unconscious form slumped forward, drying vomit stuck in her hair in tacky clumps and then over at Caroline whose eyes were wide in her skull.

Under Talia’s gaze, the man holding Caroline pulled his hand away from her mouth and whimpers immediately began spilling from between her quivering lips. 

“What can you do girl?” Talia directed at Caroline whose ability to speak escaped her entirely. 

“Stand up. I asked you a question,” Talia repeated and pulled a titanium knife with a wickedly sharp blade from inside her coat. 

Caroline struggled to stand on shaky and weak knees but couldn’t raise her eyes to meet Talia’s.

“You have two choices girl. You can work and earn the privilege of retaining your life as well as be provided adequate sustenance and shelter or you can die. Now.”

Fresh bloated tears leaked from the corners of Caroline’s eyes as fear made her bladder release and hot urine ran down the supple skin of her thighs and pool in the lining of her red Prada flats. 

Caroline nodded slowly between sniffling as shame formed a thick layer over her fear. She nodded harder when Talia asked another question. “If your friends were awake, would they provide the same answer and choose life?” 

Talia turned and looked over her shoulder at Bane, where he was partially obscured in the shadows. 

Barsad’s slimmer form was nearly hidden behind Bane’s imposing frame and he stepped forward at Talia’s verbal orders. 

“Find those two places to sleep,” she said gesturing to Caroline and the unconscious Jayne before turning to Bane and adding. “After you kill those two, gather her up and follow me.”

The two men had barely time to breathe before Barsad had a gun pulled and shot one through the heart and hollow of his neck. The other man took a step backward and tried to avoid Bane’s reaching hand. He failed and found starbursts of bright light exploding behind his eyelids as his neurological system went into veritable death throes.  


Bane waited until he heard the satisfying crunch of the would-be rapist accomplice’s windpipe under his grasp before he released his grip. 

Bane and Barsad both watched Talia walk away before they each picked up an unconscious girl. 

A low groan fell from Jayne’s lips as Barsad lifted her from the floor. Her lips were dried and cracked. As Barsad carried her away, her head listed from side to side. He was flanked by Caroline whose tears had temporarily evaporated for the moment.

Bane crossed to Rose’s unconscious form and scooped one massive forearm under her knees and slid the other behind her shoulders to cradle her neck and head.

Bane lifted her in his arms and could immediately feel his forearm awash with the warm blood oozing from the back of her head. The back of her skull had sustained a healthy laceration that was slowly oozing thick rivulets of bright blood from dozens of busted capillaries. 

Rose moaned at the contact when he hoisted her in his arms and followed after Talia who had impatiently slowed her pace until Bane was right behind her. 

Bane realized when they reached a dank room on a lower level that he had been trying to not jostle the girl in his arms. A frown creased his forehead as he carried Rose through the metal reinforced door.

Inside the stone wall room was a desk with a high wattage bulb under a disgustingly atrocious orange lampshade.

There was a full-sized mattress in a dim corner where the light didn’t quite penetrate. A few dark blankets were neatly spread across the mattress, the corners made in military fashion. 

Bane moved the blankets aside as he set Rose on the navy-blue sheet. He flipped the blankets over her and turned his attention towards Talia. 

Rose’s conscious mind slowly came back to life and she began to stir from her unconscious state, her mind slowly swam to the surface. She kept her eyes closed and listened through the spikes of pain that pierced her head, to the conversation taking place at her right side.

The cultured voice of a woman reached her ears first. "She may possess some temporary value."

"What would you like done with her?" asked a strangely fear invoking melodic voice.

"Make her fear you before she loves you. I want to test her boundaries and limits, see if she has any worth. Then break her. Fast," came the eloquent syllables which caused her to suppress a chilling shiver as the woman's voice added.

"Kill her slowly. Only after you have exploited every piece of knowledge and information from her."

Rose listened as silence blanked the room as the woman with the clear annunciation and the mechanically toned man stopped speaking.

"I have to go," the woman's voice announced suddenly. She nearly flinched at the close proximity of the voice.

"I'm hosting a benefit tonight and Miranda Tate needs to look her best in case there is a rarely seen attendee."

She listened as the sound of the woman's shoes receded, but she knew the male was still in the room. 

Bane’s anger flared to life as he thought of Bruce Wayne putting his hands upon Talia. He looked over at Rose as she hovered in a waking state. 

Rose could feel the weight of his gaze as she became aware of how dry her throat was. She struggled to not cough, her mouth was nearly devoid of saliva and she felt pain radiating around the circumference of her slim neck.

The back of her head was partially numb, and she desperately wanted to reach up and feel along her neck and scalp.

"How is this even happening?" Rose thought as a steady ache seemed to fill her head like a bloated balloon and press inside every nook and cranny of her brain.

She let out a slow and controlled breath when she heard the sound of heavy footsteps exiting and fade from her hearing's capability of detection. "Maybe this is a really, really vivid dream," she thought with a very faint amount of delusional hope.

"You're going to wake up and be back at home. There are some freezer burned waffles and a whole bottle of syrup in the cupboard," she thought and cracked her eyes open into a thin line.

It was too painful to turn her head to either side but if the walls looked anything like the ceiling there was certainly nothing wonderful to see and write home about. Overhead was smooth grey concrete, randomly dripping fat drops of water from the condensation.

There was a light from somewhere nearby and she strained her hears when she heard the same heavy footsteps approaching.

"What went wrong with today to end up here?" she thought as the heavy footsteps stopped and were closely followed by the creaking protests of a chair as the man sat.

Rose heard the rustling of papers and the groan of the chair that openly protested its occupant’s weight. 

Rose pretended to still be unconscious as Bane looked over a set of blueprints of the Gotham City sewer system. 

As Bane looked over the blueprints and then compared it to notes on a map, he would occasionally glance over at Rose. He noted the moment she was fully awake and still feigned otherwise. 

He returned his attention back to the top of the desk and waited nearly an hour before speaking. 

“Since you’re awake, I need to check your scalp in case you need stitches.” Bane opened a drawer on the lower left-hand side of the desk and pulled a battered first aid kit out.  
Bane stood, “no need to keep up the rouse. Open your eyes and sit up.”

Rose opened her eyes and looked over at the strong man who was walking towards her. 

She struggled to sit upright and for a few seconds her vision swam from the abrupt movement. Rose pressed her lips together to stifle a cry when Bane’s rough fingertips probed the back of her head. She felt tears well and threaten to spill down her cheeks when Bane spread a thick antiseptic cleanser on her scalp and pressed a thick stack of square gauze against her head. 

She closed her eyes as he wound a roll of stretchy gauze to hold the bandages in place. “You don’t need stitches.” 

Rose kept her eyes closed as the bed sagged when the man with the unique voice sat down on its edge. 

“Open your eyes,” the melodic voice ordered. 

Rose slowly opened her eyes and looked at the man sitting near her. “What is your name?” he asked.

“Rose,” she said as she cleared her throat.

He held up her laminated identification card, “this states your name as Margaret Rose.”

“Margaret is a family name, I prefer Rose.”

“Do you know who I am?” the masked man asked.

“I think…you’re responsible for the incident at the football game today,” Rose managed to stammer. 

“Yes, there was an incident today at the stadium,” Bane said with an amused lilt to his tone which grew more serious sounding as he added. “I must offer my apologies for what that soldier did to you, I was set to intervene, but you ripped his throat out first. Fine work I might add.”

Rose didn’t know a proper response, so she nodded dumbly and looked down at her hands. She picked at a hangnail until it grew reddened, the masked man’s question caused her breath to catch.

“Rose, do you wish to remain living?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and Bane watched the color drain from her face as fear filled her features. 

“Do you possess any skills?”

“I can cook,” Rose blurted out and then added with a rush. “And I can butcher a cow.”

Bane watched with amusement as her rising nerves caused her words to flow in a rush from her lips. “My dad owns a cattle ranch and I’ve been cooking with my grandma and mom since I was old enough to sit on the counter and hold a wooden spoon.”

“Are you a decent cook?”

“I’m actually a really good cook,” she said with a trace of defensiveness. “I’m attending culinary school next year.” 

“You shall be given a day to rest, tomorrow you will start in the kitchens. You will arrange meals and cook with the current chef.”

“Will I be given access to fresh ingredients?” she asked as she wiped her sleeve at the corners of her eyes and smeared her eyeliner. “What a stupid thing to ask?” she thought as soon as the question fell from her lips. 

“There will be someone provided to purchase your cooking needs.” He said and saw pain fill her eyes as her headache increased. “Take this time to rest,” he said standing from the bed.

“What can I call you?” Rose blurted as he retook his seat at the large desk. 

“You may call me Bane.”

“Bane,” she thought as she laid back and pulled the blankets up and around her shoulders. 

Rose turned on her side with her back to Bane and curled into a close to fetal position. Despite the steady ache inside her skull, sleep found her quickly. “Bane, please don’t kill me,” she thought as she succumbed back to the comforting arms of sleep.

Rose stirred awake the next morning, her sleep had been deep and dreamless. Her full bladder began to scream as soon as her eyes fluttered open. She rolled to her side and struggled up to a sitting position. Rose groaned at the deep ache in the back of her skull but her straining bladder seemed to supersede any and all discomfort. 

She looked around and found herself alone in the dim room. Rose strained her eyes at the concrete walls and looked for any door that might lead to a bathroom. She stood from the bed and crossed to the metal bolted door. She tentatively twisted the metallic coated doorknob and frowned when she found it locked. 

Rose’s bladder sent a painful twinge to pool and swirl in her lower abdomen and she bent at the waist to relieve the downward pressure. She tugged at the knob and felt no give in the metal. As Rose was frantically pawing at the door, she heard the distinct sound of a key sliding in and engaging the lock’s steel tumblers.  


Rose stumbled backwards when it swung open and Bane’s massive form filled the doorway. 

A strangled apology as well as a plea for bathroom privileges was already falling from her lips as his hulking shape filled her vision when he began walking towards her. 

“Since you’re up, eat this and I’ll take you to the kitchen,” Bane said as he dropped a bowl next to her. The lukewarm contents slopped around in the eggshell white ceramic vessel. 

He was turning to leave when Rose began to renew her pleas in earnest. “Please, I need to use the bathroom.”

“Come on then,” Bane said as she struggled to her feet and cautiously followed him down a chilly hall to a small room the size of a utility closet. A small porcelain toilet and chipped sink were the only contents of the tiny room as well as a square of mint green soap and a coarse towel. 

Rose would have peed in just about anything by the time Bane thankfully let her shut the door and have a shred of privacy as she voided into the dank water. 

As she washed her hands with the icy water and fresh smelling soap, Bane waited outside the thin door for her. Rose cupped a hand under the running faucet and swished the tepid water around her mouth. She wrinkled her nose at the lingering metallic taste of blood remaining from her justifiable homicide. 

Bane listened as the water turned on and off and soon the doorknob turned as she emerged looking a little better for wear. 

Bane wordlessly led her back to the sparsely furnished room and her further cooling congealing substance that served as breakfast. 

“Eat. I shall return in a short time, see that you are changed and ready.”

Rose dipped the spoon into the tasteless mush and set it aside. Her eyes found a small pile of folded clothes on the corner of the large desk. She unfolded a long-sleeved thermal shirt and dark jeans. A thick pair of wool socks, plain pair of panties and equally monochromatic grey bra accompanied the clothes. 

Rose was pulling on the hooded sweatshirt when Bane returned. He glanced down at the full bowl containing the wet mass before returning his attention back to her. 

“I will check your bandages first. Turn around.”

Rose hurried to follow his orders fast enough and soon felt his strong fingers moving along the gauze and lifting away the square of bandages. She bit back a low hiss as he probed the laceration before spreading a thin layer of antibiotic cream along its edges.

Bane replaced the gauze wrap, effectively securing the bandages into place. “Take these,” he stated in a solemn yet melodic tone when she turned back around. 

Rose looked down at his partially gloved hands and saw two blue oval tablets nestled in his sizeable palm. She plucked the tablets from the creased and deeply lined surface of the glove. He felt the light pressure of her fingers as they brushed lightly against the fabric.

She dry swallowed the pills, grimacing at their acidic taste when they began to decompose in her warm saliva. 

Bane considered her with his heavy gaze until she began to squirm. He walked from the room and paused before glancing back to make sure Rose was following. 

Rose hurried to try and keep up with his long strides and jumped when his voice found her ears. Bane never looked back at her as he spoke, he knew she was too scared to do anything but walk in his shadow. 

“I will bring you to the kitchen every morning and you will assist in anything that needs to be done. I will return in the evening to retrieve you.”

Rose was still processing his statements when he continued. 

“At that time, you will have the evening meal prepared.”

Rose scrambled to keep up when he led her up a few metal staircases, taking the steps two at a time. 

“Is that clear Margaret Rose?” he asked sparing her a fleeting glance when she reached the landing.

As Rose’s ability to formulate a sentence was temporarily hobbled, at the other end of the lengthy walkway was another bolted metal door. Behind this door which bore several deep scratches and dull scuffs were the wide-awake Caroline and Jayne. 

Both girls had been deposited in the bare-walled and dimly lit room. It was similar to the one that Rose currently occupied but this room boasted a few wobbly metal cots instead of a linen covered mattress in the corner.

Caroline pulled her sweatshirt tighter around her lithe form and pushed away the bowl of cold slop. Jayne stuck her spoon in the cool to the touch instant cereal and took a tentative taste. She wrinkled her nose but managed a few bites, the flavorless mess helped quell her uneasy belly and the acidic aftertaste of bile.  


Both girls flinched when the door unlocked and swung open, they stood when a heavily armed man walked in the room. “You two. With me,” the anonymous man said in broken English. 

As Jayne and Caroline followed the deeply tanned man with his shock of black hair down a flight of stairs, nearby Rose managed to get her vocal cords to cooperate and create coherent spoken words. 

“Y…yes, I understand,” she stammered.

Bane gave the barest of nods and proceeded down the long hall that led to two double doors. 

Rose watched as Bane pushed open the double doors that led to a long, narrow room that crudely resembled an industrial kitchen. 

The disorganized but functional kitchen loomed at Rose and she looked around with wide eyes at the multi-burner stovetop and deep sinks filled with near-scalding sudsy water. 

A short, squat man with heavily scarred knuckles appeared from a pantry on the right side of the room.

“Sir?” he asked.

“Erik, this is Margaret Rose. She prefers to be called Rose and will be working with you from today and forward. She states that she possesses the ability to cook.” 

Erik nodded and looked briefly at Rose. “A spoiled rich kid. Why is she being left alive?” Erik thought as he looked her over.

Bane detected something in Erik’s gaze and directed his next words to him. “She is not to be harmed in any way. If she performs an indiscretion, she is to be brought directly to me.”

Erik nodded as Bane turned to Rose. “You are not to leave this room unless it’s to use the bathroom facilities. At which time you will be accompanied by Erik, is that understood?”

Rose nodded and watched Bane’s broad shoulders depart from view as the doors swung shut. 

“The breakfast dishes need to be washed and dried, then we prepare lunch.”

Rose looked to where Erik was pointing before he walked away and began making notes on a forest green clipboard, talking to himself under his breath.

She nearly grinned at the familiarity of his heavily German accented words. Her grandmother never spoke a word of English and Rose grew up knowing German backwards and forwards. 

Rose walked over to the tall and uneven stacks of dirty dishes and utensils. After locating a pair of canary yellow gloves, she began to soak and scrub dish after stained coffee cup and rinsed each before drying them by hand with a plush cotton dishtowel. 

Erik watched her wash, dry and put away the clean dishes without being told too. He continued to watch with a certain amount of astonishment as she drained each sink and scrubbed them clean before refilling them with fresh hot sudsy water. 

Rose hung the gloves over the faucet to air dry and turned to see Erik watching her. Her heart nearly skipped, and he cleared his throat before pointing to the other side of the room and the stainless-steel topped prep station. 

Rose followed Erik as he outlined the very plain lunch of sliced deli meat on bread, fruit and a green salad.

Rose picked up a can of fruit cocktail with heavy syrup and then looked back to Erik as he pointed to where the clean cutting utensils were as well as sandwich condiments. 

“Is there a pantry or freezer?” Rose asked in the space between Erik’s instructions. 

“Of course,” Erik said, annoyed at what he interpreted as youthful stupidity.

“Dummes Weibchen, (Stupid bitch)” Erik muttered and shook his head as he went to fetch a few loaves of white bread. 

“I am neither stupid nor a bitch!” Rose stated in a louder tone that she had anticipated. She paused when Erik paused and turned back to her, his hand still empty of bread. 

“Entschuldigen sie bitte” (Excuse me?)

“I said. I’m neither stupid nor a,” Rose said and paused. She was suddenly unsure of whether she should have said anything. 

Erik continued to wait for her to finish her sentence. He cleared his throat and she took a deep breath and tried to puff out her chest. 

“Ich sagte. Ich bin weder dumm noch ein Weibchen.” (I said I’m neither stupid nor a bitch.)

“Maybe not, but the day is as young as you are. Walk-in freezer to the left, pantry on the right.”

“Danke,” Rose said fought a small smile as she walked past him to the pantry. 

Erik also concealed a smile as he turned his attention back to fetching bread. Rose emerged from the pantry with an armful of produce that she dumped on the counter. She immediately left and returned with a selection of herbs and spices.

Erik couldn’t contain his silence and finally asked what she was doing when she made a third and then fourth trip to retrieve a Panini press and then a stack of shallow sheet pans. 

“What are you doing to my lunch menu?” Erik nearly demanded as Rose spread the equipment around the kitchen. She didn’t answer until she had thoroughly washed her hands. 

Rose looked down at her soapy fingertips, saturated in opalescent bubbles that died on contact with her skin. “Such brief beauty.” she thought as she rinsed her hands.

“I’m just going to try and jazz up your food a bit, that’s all,” Rose said as she dried her hands with a few rough paper towels. Erik watched as she moved past him and plucked a few loaves of the bread from a low shelf. 

“Jazz up my menu?” Erik asked with skepticism. 

“Yeah, I’ve got a few recipes that I can easily make work with those existing dishes.”

Erik’s phone began to buzz in his pocket, he looked at the screen and caller’s name and then back to Rose.

“You know what,” he said and looked at the phone’s brightly lit and buzzing face. “Do what you’d like, I’m going to take this.”

Rose watched him walk away, she adjusted a small radio under a nearby cabinet to a soothing albeit static ridden classical station and made a few notes for herself to alter the existing menu. 

Erik spent a lengthy amount of time on the phone. When he ended the call, his nose caught the tantalizing aroma of warmed basil with crisp corners, vine-ripened tomatoes with taut skins and melted richly flavored cheese. 

“What is this?” Erik demanded in shock when he returned to see Rose’s flushed and sweaty face as she moved around the kitchen like a rabid bumblebee. He looked to most of the chafing dishes in the progress of being filled. 

“It’s lunch. Your menu with a few tweaks,” Rose said as she held her fingertips less than an inch apart in the air. 

“What are these tweaks?”

“Well, I made the deli meat sandwiches with mayo and mustard on plain bread into a deli meat, tomato and cheese Panini. I also made a few without meat in case there are those other than carnivores.”

Erik walked over to a dented dish and pulled out one of the triangular sandwiches. “I think that’s the one with just tomatoes, basil and mozzarella,” Rose said as he took a big bite.

She watched him chew and swallow and then point to the next dish as he finished the sandwich in two more large bites and wiped his mouth. 

“That’s the green salad. When I made the Panini’s, I removed the crust and toasted them into salt and pepper croutons. I used the last of the spinach and red onion from the pantry. I also…...” Rose said and trailed off when Erik had quite a few forkfuls of the sweet vinaigrette coated spinach leaves and savory crunchy croutons. 

“And the fruit cocktail?” Erik asked. She handed him a small bowl from the counter that she had been topping with mint. 

“This has the fruit cocktail on the bottom. I made a granita to put over the top from the heavy syrup.”

“There’s also a bit of mint on the top,” she added as Erik took a heaping spoonful of the icy sweetness. 

Rose waited in near to terrified silence as Erik finished the last of the fruit slash dessert part of the meal. 

“You’re hired,” he finally said and briefly got really close to outwardly smiling.


	4. Don't Abuse this Privilege

The afternoon passed as Erik and Rose loaded up large tables with the dishes and kept the trays full until lunch was over. Erik watched empty tray after empty tray remain and heard murmurs about the menu tweaks and hoping dinner was the same. 

Later while they washed and dried the lunch dishes, Rose asked about the existing dinner menu. The two discussed her ideas and then Erik grabbed an ink pen and pad of paper  
and told her to make a shopping list and he would have the items retrieved. 

Rose felt a glimmer of happiness before reality came crashing back in that she was imprisoned underground and had already nearly been assaulted. “Not to mention the fact that in eleven days I turn 18 and have already killed a man,” she thought morosely. 

Rose made a quick list after she noted a tentative meal plan for the week. “Umm, what does Bane eat?”

Erik paused and looked at her as he spoke with absolute severity wrapped around each syllable. 

“I prepare a specific meal for him and have it ready in the evening.”

“Is it like what stroke victims eat if they have difficulty swallowing?”

“What do you know about that girl?”

“My grandma. She had a stroke a few years ago. One of the nurses at the hospital gave my mom a soup recipe that is actually really good.”

“I don’t think your menu changes are appropriate here,” Erik said and turned back to putting away spoons and forks.

“But why not, those men out there seemed to like the food.”

“The consequences for falling into bad favor with Bane are often fatal if not permanently life altering.”

Rose felt the color drain from her face, “it’s really good though. I’d bet money on what mom calls the stroke soup against many commercial canned soups.” 

“If I allow you to do this and it goes poorly, your blood is on my hands.”

“I will take full responsibility,” Rose said with as much strength as she could muster. It wasn’t much more than a brief spark in her eyes. 

Erik shrugged and shook his head; he muttered a rapid prayer and nodded his consent. 

Rose went over the changes to the dinner menu with Erik before she started in on the “stroke soup.” It needed a bit of time to cook and be prepared.

Rose had altered Erik’s baked pork loins with salt and pepper to a favorite pig dish of hers. She told Erik how she’d let the pork marinate in a mixture of orange juice, honey and soy. She’d then crush up and toast peanuts and pecans and after the pork had soaked awhile, would put the nuts over the top of the loin. The sweet and salty elements lent themselves nicely to the succulent pork. 

Erik nodded as she turned his standard issue mashed potatoes to including cream cheese, chopped chives and scallions added to the mix. The last part of the dish was rice with salt and pepper. 

Rose began to feel a bit more of that fleeting happiness when she told Erik she was going to chop some onions, shallots and mushrooms and caramelize them until they were glistening under the eye and sweet to the tongue. 

Right before serving, she said to toast some chopped walnuts until their flavor was rich and stir those into the rice along with the onion mixture. Rose caught herself smiling when she described how much it transformed white rice into something worth having seconds. 

Rose started the onion mix in a sauté pan and then turned her attention to preparing Bane’s supper. She rinsed and chopped asparagus, zucchini, green beans along with a plethora of other colorful root and flowery vegetables and combined it all with a chicken stock. She added some cream and other spices and blended the entire mixture until it was smooth and free of any lumps. 

Rose tasted the velvety texture and smiled in approval. She passed a spoonful to Erik who found himself liking it. 

“This might do, perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow after all.”

Rose’s eyes grew a bit wider, “I hope so, grandma really liked it. She even made a few better changes to the recipe.”

Rose and Erik made it through the dinner crowd and were in the process of putting away plates and bowls when Bane appeared in the kitchen entryway. 

He watched on for a few moments as Erik and Rose chattered back and forth. Bane tilted his head when he heard the two of them switch effortlessly back and forth between German and English.

Erik saw Bane first and stopped what he was doing. Rose parroted his movements when she also saw him standing there. 

“This is the end of your workday.”

Rose nodded and pulled apart the looping bow of her stained apron. Erik clapped her on the shoulder and said she did a fine job as she left in the path of Bane’s footsteps. 

Rose followed Bane as she carried a tray with a bowl of her family’s famous “stroke soup,” and her plate that contained a slice of the pork, a spinach salad with strawberries and a small mountain of bright green broccoli. 

“I hope he likes the soup. I hope he likes the soup. I hope he likes the soup,” repeated in a continuous mantra in Rose’s mind as they neared the simple room with the gaudy orange lampshade. 

“I hope he likes the soup.” Rose thought as Bane pushed open the metal covered door.

“I hope he likes the soup,” Rose thought as she followed his hulking form into the room and set the tray on the paper and blueprint laden desktop. 

Bane watched her set a deep soup bowl and accoutrements of utensils on the desktop before turning her attention to her own plate. 

Rose glanced around the room and noticed a small vinyl topped folding table set up near the mattress. A near matching chair was tucked under the table. She noticed the linen on the bed had been straightened and tucked into tight, neat corners. On the surface of the metal card table was a stack of lined paper and a freshly sharpened number two pencil.  


Bane followed her line of sight. “You may eat your meal there,” he said.

He regarded her silently until she picked up her plate and glass of tea and retreated to the square table and squat chair. 

Bane watched her settle and finally began to eat after folding and refolding her paper napkin a few times. After she had relaxed a bit and her hunger overrode any fear, he sat with his broad back partially facing her and unfastened a few buckles at the sides of his mask. 

From where she sat, Rose heard a hiss and twin puffs of air as Bane lifted the mask away from his face. Her back stiffened and she felt like looking back over her shoulder at him. 

“Will I turn into a pillar of salt?” she thought to herself.

As though Bane could read a transcript of her thoughts, his voice found her ears and she swallowed hard as she reached for her tea. “I’d strongly advise you to stay where you are and not change the direction of your eyes, or that may very well serve as your last meal.”

Bane didn’t need to ask whether she heard or understood him. A certain amount of satisfaction served as a near tangible appetizer as he felt fear began to radiate from her every pore and hang heavy in the air. 

He dipped the spoon into the deep green soup and brought it to his scarred lips. The blended soup coated his damaged taste buds. Bane took another quick bite as he savored the hearty blend. He was surprised this had come from the same kitchen as his previous meals. His normal evening meal was a tasteless and mashed mix of root and starchy vegetables with a bland protein powder shake that tried to sell itself as great-tasting and non-gritty.

Rose’s plate was soon empty, and she drained her glass of tea before she balled up her napkin and tossed it on her plate where it soaked up the residual juice from the pork. 

“Where did you get this recipe?” Bane asked after he had finished the entire bowl. Rose heard his spoon click against the bottom of the empty ceramic vessel. 

Rose kept her eyes trained to the wall in front of her and listened as he slipped the mask back in place. She answered after she heard another pair of hisses and aerosol puffs accompany him refastening his metallic coiled mask. 

“My grandma had a stroke a little while back and my mom came up with this soup after she got home from the hospital.”

He grunted at her response and mumbled that it was passable as he asked if she needed to use the bathroom before going to bed.

Rose nodded with her back still facing him. As Bane instructed her to stand and escorted her to the same bathroom as much earlier in the day, Jayne and Caroline were also being brought back to their shared cell on the opposite end of Gotham’s intricate sewer system.

Another nameless man locked the door behind them and left the two girls alone in the dim room. 

Caroline rubbed at her reddened eyes and looked over at Jayne whose eyes were just as discolored and swollen.

“What are we going to do?” Jayne asked as she rubbed her cold hands together. 

“I have no idea, but I can’t do another day like today,” Caroline whined and winced down at her sore hands and aching shoulders. 

Caroline and Jayne had been taken down to a makeshift laundry room and spent the first part of the day washing, drying, folding clothes and linen. They spent the bulk of the afternoon cleaning without any gloves to protect their skin from bleach and ammonia filled spray bottles. 

Jayne and Caroline had never had the need to use a washer or dryer before, as clothes always ended up back in their drawers, mysteriously clean and neatly folded. 

At the mid-point of the day, they were each brought a plate of food and plastic cup of water. Both girls had finished their entire plates, unaccustomed to much work with the fleet of housekeeper’s their parents employed. 

“We could make a break for it,” Caroline crazily suggested.

“Yeah right, do you even know which direction leads out of here? Or where we even are for that matter? What about Rose?” Jayne responded with in rapid fire fashion. 

“Okay, okay. Don’t yell at me,” Caroline whined.

“I’m sorry,” Jayne said quickly. “I’m so scared I can’t think. Do you think Rose is even still alive?”

As Caroline and Jayne continued to ask questions without getting any answers, across the dank concrete corridors, Bane led Rose back to the concrete walled room. Once back, Rose looked over at him and blurted out her question without thinking first. 

“Where will you be sleeping?”

“In that bed,” Bane answered shutting and locking the door. 

“Where will I be sleeping then?”

“In that bed,” he repeated and kept the smile from reaching his eyes as her face drained of color and she averted her gaze. 

Bane spoke in firm authority when her eyes flooded with worry and she looked at his large hands and what he was capable of doing to her. 

“Do not allow yourself to worry Margaret Rose, I have no intention of violating your body.”

Rose felt her face flush and her heart thud in her chest as she watched Bane cross to his desk and open a middle drawer. Her eyes widened further than she would have thought possible when he brought out a pair of military police issued handcuffs. 

“What are those for? I promise I won’t try to escape,” she began to babble as Bane advanced closer.

“Please, I promise,” Rose added and backed up a few steps. Bane’s hand shot out and captured one of her wrists, she cried out when he snapped the metal cuff closed. 

She struggled uselessly against his brute strength as he pulled her forcibly to the mattress top. Rose watched helplessly as Bane secured the other side of the handcuffs to the metal bedframe. 

“You’ll have to earn that privilege,” Bane said as he pulled back the blankets and casually settled them over her squirming form. 

Sleep was a long time in coming for Rose that night, but Bane was true to his word and didn’t so much as breathe on her. 

Every day for the next nearly two weeks, each day was eerily similar to the previous. 

Rose would greet each morning with an improved bowl of breakfast cereal that she had brought to the kitchen after her second morning of the tasteless slop. After eating, Bane would escort her to the bathroom where she would void, wash her face and brush her teeth. She had gotten into the habit of pulling her hair back into a tight bun and securing it in place with a purple rubber band.

He would then accompany her to the kitchen where she would work all day with Erik. Every great once in a while, Erik would have a grainy television playing in the background.  


Rose’s days in the kitchens were filled with altering menus, creating new recipes and endless sinks of dirty dishes. Bane had told Erik to provide her with whatever she requested in regard to meal preparations and found himself looking forward to his evening meal. 

Jayne and Caroline’s days also didn’t change much. They continued their laundry, cleaning, lunch and then clean some more cycle as the days passed by one at a time.  
Bane would arrive to fetch her when he deemed her workday to be over and bring her back to their room. Rose was always grateful when Bane made a pit stop at a small enclosed shower and let her have five minutes to clean and wash her hair as he waited outside and prevented anyone from remotely thinking about harassing or molesting her. 

The day before her eighteenth birthday started the same as every other day before it. After Bane dropped her off at the kitchen in the morning and was later sought out by Talia.

“Are you making progress with the girl?”

Bane nodded thinking to the previous night when he had locked the cuff in place around her wrist. He had noted that she had ceased to resist and now complacently extended her wrist when it was time to go to bed. 

He fought to concentrate on Talia’s instructions, but his mind remembered the early morning hours with painful clarity and wanted to press rewind and go back there. 

Just a couple hours earlier, Bane had awoken before Rose. He glanced over and found her on her side, facing away from him. She was breathing in a deep and even rhythm as he rolled to his side and slid closer to her. 

Without waking her, he carefully removed his mask and bit back a hiss of pain when the narcotic was taken away.

Despite his discomfort, Bane lightly pressed his scarred lips against the back of her sleep tangled hair. He inhaled her delicate but intoxicating scent through his damaged nasal passages.

Talia observed Bane’s eyes as she asked in an icy tone. “Do you want her, my friend?”

Bane held her gaze as she added, “do you want her the same way Bruce Wayne wants Miranda Tate?”

“I’m acting my part according to your instructions,” he answered, and Talia narrowed her eyes before changing the topic to Gotham’s destruction. 

While Rose’s day passed by in the kitchen as the many days previous, Erik flipped on the television set and tuned it to the local news. Rose was busy stirring a large vat of green beans and plump pearl onions when the next news story was a feature on her and her three missing friends. 

Rose let go of the long wooden spoon and stared at the dusty TV set. There was a toll-free hotline to call with information on the missing girls. According to the screen, any information that led to finding the girl’s as well as the apprehension and arrest of the kidnappers, would be given a lucrative cash reward.

The water nearly boiled over before Rose noticed when Kylie’s parents appeared on the TV screen. The news anchor summarized that Kylie’s broken and battered body had been found on a sidewalk and there had so far been zero trace of the other girls.

Rose watched her picture flash on the screen, followed by a recent photograph of Caroline and then Jayne. 

The camera came back to Kylie’s parents who both spoke from a place of shock. Kylie’s mom Janice was wearing a smart power suit, she was a top prosecuting attorney and had been brought to her knees by the death of her daughter. Next to her was Marcus, Kylie’s father whose day, night and on-call job was that of a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon. 

Rose’s breath caught in her throat when the camera panned over to her own parent’s and then Caroline and Jayne’s. 

She protested without thinking when Erik switched off the television. “Please, can’t I watch a bit more?” Rose pleaded. 

Erik shook his head, “no, it’s not good to remember that time. You need to think of this as your life now, it will be better for you.”

“Better for me?” Rose asked and turned down the flame of the burner. 

“ja Suppenmädchen” (“Yes, soup girl.”) 

“It would be better to forget the person you were,” Erik added before turning back to chopping up a flank steak and dropping it into a honey sweetened and chili spice marinade. 

Rose stared at Erik’s back for a few beats before sighing hard and moving to peel a whole mess of rinsed Yukon gold potatoes. 

“Is Bane going to kill me?” Rose asked and Erik’s hands paused in slicing through the beef.

“I don’t believe so,” Erik lied. He closed his eyes as guilt washed over him when he heard her go back to peeling and then slicing the potatoes into thick chunks.

Rose was quiet the rest of the day as her mind reeled with everything Erik had said and what she had seen on the news. 

She had lapsed into a deeper silence when she later asked Erik if he knew where Caroline and Jayne were. Erik had again lied and stated that they were fine and were working in other areas during the day. 

Erik didn’t know anything about the other girl’s and wasn’t sure if he was even completely lying. 

While the rest of Rose’s day passed, Caroline and Jayne were okay albeit unhappy with sore lower backs and perpetually aching feet. Their days also passed by with unlimited amounts it seemed of laundry and never-ending cleaning. 

When Bane arrived to let Rose know that her workday was over, she flinched when he stepped around her to open the door. His forehead pulled into a frown at her reaction, she had seemed to be relaxing to some degree in his presence. 

Bane noticed her tense shoulders as she ate from her plate of pork medallions and greens. 

She flinched again when his voice fell around her. “You should plan on rising earlier tomorrow, you will be accompanying me on an errand.”  


Rose was glad to be facing away from him, her eyes grew wide and she thought of the news segment earlier. She pushed away her partially finished plate and took another sip of her flat soda. 

Bane watched as her features filled with an impassive expression and she walked to the mattress and sat. He approached her with the metal handcuffs and she dutifully lifted her wrist so he could snap it into place. 

Rose looked up startled when he immediately removed the cuff from her wrist and put them in his pocket. He fought a smile at the confusion that filled her eyes. 

“Don’t abuse this privilege,” he stated in a solemn tone and Rose nodded as he returned to his desk and began sorting through a stack of papers. 

She replayed the day’s events over and over in her head as sleep was slow in carrying her away. Rose’s thoughts were predominantly focused on that errand that Bane mentioned as she slipped into a dreamless sleep.


	5. More than Generous

Almost everything about the morning of Rose’s 18th birthday started out differently than any of the previous days. She stirred awake at the mechanical yet melodic sound of Bane’s voice, her body already craving a couple more hours of sleep. 

“What time is it?” Rose mumbled as she rubbed her eyes. 

Bane ignored her question and dropped a stack of folded clothes at the foot of the bed. 

“Change and then I’ll take you to the bathroom.”

Rose’s eyes longed to close and return to the world of a dreamless sleep, but she sat up and pulled the stack of clothing into her lap. She unfolded a pair of dark cargo pants, an equally dark long-sleeved thermal shirt and a zippered sweater to wear over all of it. 

She laced up her black sneakers and as per the instructed custom, knocked on the door and waited until Bane opened it. Rose followed him to the bathroom and saturated a washcloth with cold water before running it across her face and neck. 

Bane waited outside the bathroom, listening to the now almost familiar sounds of the water turning on and off as she washed her face, brushed her teeth and other rituals.  


Inside the small dimly lit bathroom, Rose regarded her reflection in the tarnished mirror. In the dark clothes, she looked like any number of the slim anonymous male soldiers she saw milling about on her way to and from the kitchen.

Rose emerged and followed Bane through a series of halls and down several metal staircases until they came to a parking lot of sorts. 

Row upon row of ATV’s and four wheel-drive trucks and paneled vans sat parked with cold engines, except for one. 

Rose watched as the headlights to a large truck lit up and the man named Barsad sat behind the wheel. She continued to follow Bane towards the truck. She was glad for the thermal layer, the chilly air tried to weave through the fibers of her clothes and kiss her skin.

Rose climbed up into the cab of the truck and scooted to the furthest edge of the seat as Bane settled beside her. 

Barsad steered the truck through a series of tunnels and eventually the pre-dawn sky greeted them.

Rose fought to stay sitting still, the truck cab seemed colder than outside and she desperately longed to switch on the heater. She tried to not squirm, remembering the last time she had been sitting next to Bane in a moving vehicle. 

A shiver manifested through Rose and she immediately grew stiff and hoped that Bane hadn’t noticed.

Bane glanced down when he felt the shudder move through Rose. He noted she clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering and that she had curled her hands inside her sweater sleeves. 

Bane reached out to the dashboard and flipped the heater on, cool air flooded from the floor vent and with each passing mile grew a bit warmer. As Bane settled back, he couldn’t stop his mind from recalling the previous night. He had stayed up several hours after she had fallen asleep, going over blueprints and other documents concerning the city of Gotham. 

Bane frowned behind his mask as he couldn’t rationalize how his eyes had kept traveling to her sleeping form the night before. He had been sitting at the large desk with the burnt orange lampshade illuminated from the high wattage bulb and his eyes would slide over to Rose’s blanket covered form on a frequent basis. 

A short time later, Bane had killed the light and crossed to the empty side of the mattress. He had stretched out on his back and folded his hands under his head and found himself comforted by her deep and even breathing. 

While Barsad continued to drive them to a place still unknown to her, the heater did its job and made the truck cab warm and toasty. Despite the close proximity on either side of her to the men, Rose’s body grew more relaxed and her eyelids began to droop until she lapsed into a light doze. 

Bane looked over at her and smirked under his mask as her chin dropped to her chest and her head lolled side to side as Barsad navigated the nearly empty streets. 

As Rose continued to nap, her body relaxed to the right until she was leaning against Bane’s side. He looked down when he felt the pressure of her sleeping body, her closeness  
evoked lying next to her the previous night. 

The few bed linens that Bane had on the mattress didn’t effectively ward off the chill and he noticed how she had curled into the fetal position to hold onto warmth. When she had mumbled in her sleep and pulled the covers tighter around herself, Bane had rolled to his side towards her. 

Bane reached out and tucked the blankets snug around her shoulders before he lightly dropped his arm around her. He felt her body tense under his initial touch before she slid back into a relaxed physical state. 

As the wee hours of the night bled into the early morning, Bane never succumbed to sleep. Instead, he found himself moving perceptibly closer to her until he had pulled her flush back against the front of his body. 

Rose had gone to sleep in a long-sleeved hooded sweater and baggy pair of sweatpants. Bane could feel the thoroughly laundered fabric under his touch and her firm and sweet flesh underneath.

Bane had suppressed a sharp bite of pain and audible hiss as he removed his mask so he could tentatively press his scarred nose and lips against the back of her head as he had once before. He had grown bolder in the cloak of darkness and brushed her tangled hair away from the side of her neck. Bane had traced a rough fingertip along the curve of her earlobe before trailing down the length of her neck. His fingertips had paused above the carotid pulse in her neck as she continued to sleep. 

Bane shook himself free from his thoughts of relishing the memory of the steady rhythm of her heartbeat under his warm touch when Barsad took a sharp corner and jostled Rose to a wakeful state.

It took Rose a few seconds to swim back to a wakeful reality. Her eyes grew large as she realized that the firm and solid surface, she was leaning against was Bane’s muscular and powerful body. She swallowed a startled sound and sat upright and squared her shoulders. She spent an obscenely long time plucking invisible lint from her sleeves until she felt Bane’s eyes leave her nervous form. 

Rose looked around as Barsad navigated the large diesel truck over a pitted and deeply rutted road. She longed to ask where they were and didn’t recognize anything about the surrounding area. 

The city with its skyscrapers and busy intersections had been replaced by a dirt road that led to a weathered farmhouse and faded red barn. Rose could see a sprawling pasture of lush green grass, sprinkled with bales of hay that Guernsey cows were eating for breakfast.

Rose crossed her fingers that she wouldn’t have to kill a cow. She could butcher one post-mortem but adamantly refused to be the one to take its life. She looked around and remembered the barn at the family ranch was a rust colored red and where she’d hide when the cows and pigs were initially slaughtered. 

Barsad drove the rumbling truck all the way up to the weathered porch where a few dangerous looking men were gathered, smoking phallic shaped Cuban cigars.  


Rose was glad that Bane was one of the scariest looking men present as he prepared to step from the truck cab. “Stay put,” he said before him and Barsad walked towards the group of smoking men. 

Rose was more than happy to wordlessly agree with the somewhat paltry protection of the truck cab. She watched intently as Bane exchanged words with whom she assumed was the leader of the smoking men. 

Rose clapped a hand to her mouth as Bane’s hand suddenly shot out and closed around the other man’s throat. The firm cigar fell from his flaccid lips as Bane’s fingertips penetrated the soft skin around the man’s throat and tore through his esophagus and internal structures of his neck. 

Rose’s eyes darted to Barsad’s firearm as he raised it and caught one of the other men as Bane shoved the dead man at the remaining smoker. 

The man tried to catch the falling body out of habit and soon found his neck snapped, his bladder released and then nothing as his world went black. 

Rose watched as Barsad and Bane disappeared into the farmhouse and she jumped when she heard a few more rapid gunshots and male voices shouting. 

Bane and Barsad emerged a short time later and returned to the truck. Barsad drove the truck to the barn where an old forest green car was parked. Rose watched in stunned silence as they opened the trunk of an old Impala and unloaded two long silver cases that they loaded into the truck bed. 

Bane let his gaze find Rose and he was satisfied to see fear painted openly across her features and curiosity fill her eyes at what the silver cases might contain. 

The truck ride back was quiet and warmer as the sun was high overhead. Rose was getting a bit warm in her extra sweatshirt but didn’t want to try and shimmy out of her coat without bumping Bane. 

Her eyes kept drifting down to his lap where his hands were resting on the tops of his strong thighs. Rose could see the smoking man’s coagulated blood collected under his fingernails and smeared down the length of his fingers exposed from the partial gloves. 

Bane gestured for Rose to head up a flight of stairs and together they returned to the dimly lit halls that were devoid of sunlight. 

As Bane flanked Rose on the way back to their room, his voice called over her shoulder. “As it is your birthday today Margaret Rose, I will permit you to make one reasonable request.”

Rose felt her mouth drop open slightly and her mind raced to glean if there was a trick woven into his words. She stammered and finally articulated. “I’d like to see my friends.”

“You want to see your friends.” 

Rose wasn’t initially sure of how to respond. Bane hadn’t made it a question but more a statement. 

“Yes,” Rose said and swallowed hard as Bane’s eyes drilled through her hazel orbs and through the back of her skull. 

She nearly squealed when Bane’s hand was suddenly clamped around her upper arm. Rose found herself close to stumbling several times as she struggled to keep up with his much longer stride. 

He pulled her along a metal floored hall and down a short flight of stairs before he abruptly stopped in front of a closed door. Rose watched him unlock the door and pull it open. 

She waited too long for his liking and she soon felt his massive hand in the center of her back. Rose felt him push her forward through the doorway. 

“Rose?!?” cried Caroline and Jayne in near unison as she stumbled into the room closely followed by Bane’s hulking form. 

Rose managed an unintelligible choked cry of a greeting as the three girls fell into each other’s arms.

Bane watched the girls for a few moments before stepping out of the room and leaving the weepy trio alone. 

Unbeknownst to the girls, as Bane had exited the room, he had mounted a small, circular plastic object on a concrete wall. Earlier in the day, Barsad had passed him the object which was a tiny camera and recording device that picked up the barest of whispers. 

When the girls realized they were alone and their tears had abated for the time being, Caroline spoke low and in a rapid whisper. 

“Where have you been this whole time?” she asked Rose.

“I’ve been working it seems all day in the kitchen cooking and cleaning,” Rose started, and Caroline interrupted as she asked in an excited tone. “Do you have access to a phone?”

Rose shook her head, “the chef has a phone but he’s either talking on it or it’s in his front pocket.”

Caroline’s excitement diminished a bit as she asked. “What about some sort of fire escape or a knife? Can you get to a knife?”

Bane watched with growing interest on the portable black and white monitor as Rose’s normally smooth forehead, creased into the formation of a frown. She pressed her lips together before stammering over her answer. 

“I’m constantly supervised by this scary guy with a gun who is always looking over my shoulder,” Rose started in an ever-growing lie. 

Bane felt his eyebrows lift in surprise as she continued to lie. Rose answered every one of their questions with further untruths and described a hard day of work. As she lied, her thoughts were elsewhere. 

Rose smiled as she recalled a short time in the past when Erik had muttered under his breath and pulled the six-inch chef’s knife from her hands. He had shaken his head as he sharpened the knife until it held a wickedly sharp edge. 

Erik had grown tiresome of watching her mutilate beef shanks with the dull knife. He had walked over with his hand extended as she sawed the dull blade through ropy tendons and gristle. 

“Geben Sie mir das, Suppen-Mädchen.” (Give me that, Soup Girl.)

Caroline had stopped listening to Rose’s response when she caught the small smile and started to scrutinize Rose’s appearance before stating with a lift to her upper lip. “You don’t look much worse for wear.”

Rose ignored her and continued but this time spoke something truthful. 

“Besides, what’s a couple knives against an entire army of men and who knows how many people are even down here.”

Bane watched as Caroline reached out and pulled at the ends of Rose’s hair. 

“How many dicks didya have to suck to be able to wash your hair?” she asked in a nearly envious tone. 

Rose shook her head and tried to dance around the question. “I didn’t have to do anything.”

Caroline sat back and crossed her arms; she was down to one aquamarine artificial nail on the thumb of her right hand. She sniffed hard and shook her head, her dark roots showed prominently on her salon dye job. 

Bane watched with fascination and curiosity of Rose’s reaction to Caroline’s continued litany of accusations of sucking and fucking for favors and personal hygiene upkeep. 

He wondered where the girl who had ripped out her would-be rapist’s throat had gone. Bane narrowed his eyes as Rose dropped her eyes and lowered her chin as Caroline peppered her with statements. 

Bane frowned as he wondered where the girl had disappeared that had bathed in that man’s life blood. Caroline spoke in a venomous tone through full, pouty lips. Soft lips that could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch or sip high tea with the queen.

Rose brought her gaze to Jayne and spoke over Caroline. 

“How much weight have you lost?”

Jayne‘s plethora of anti-psychotic drugs made her desire food and increased her cravings. Without her anxiety and depression medication, food became irrelevant to her. Rose knew if not for coffeehouses with their delectably sweet concoctions of blended espresso and caramel syrup filled, whipped cream laden drinks, Jayne would never eat.

Since their captivity, Jayne’s body stopped receiving new doses of the many synthetic medications she swallowed morning, noon and night. Without her steady diet of buttery croissants, giant muffins bloated with blueberries and topped with large chunks of sugar crystals, Jayne had shed about twenty solid pounds and was well on her way to entering a 

Karen Carpenter look-a-like contest.

“How many of them are you fucking?” Caroline asked in the space before Jayne could answer, adding icily. 

“It’s a good thing Kev broke you in first.”

“Whatever,” Rose mumbled and shook her head.

Bane watched the beautiful marionette that was taught to walk, and talk continue to viciously taunt. 

“For someone’s who’s so in love, you don’t seem very upset.” Caroline waited expectantly for an answer that Rose fumbled in her delivery.

“Yeah, I miss him. But what can I do about it here?”

“You can fucking help us,” Caroline said with a hiss and looked to Jayne who promptly averted her gaze to her feet. 

“Ya know, Kylie used to always say that she thought you made Kevin up,” Caroline said with a sneer. 

Rose shook her head and felt her body temperature rise as her heartbeat increased and thudded against the inside of her ribs. “Kevin is real, he invited me to his parent’s cabin in  
Colorado over the holidays this year,” Rose said in a defensive tone. 

Caroline narrowed her eyes, “whatever. It doesn’t matter right now.”

Bane watched as Caroline lifted her eyebrows at Rose. “Well?” she said with exasperation, “Are you going to steal a knife or anything else from the kitchen that we can use for a weapon and escape?”

Bane decided to interrupt the conversation at that precise moment and pulled open the door and walked heavily into the room. “Time is up.”

Jayne looked up at the hulking form and spoke through quivering lips. “Please sir can’t we have a bit more time?” She was angry that Caroline had commandeered the conversation. 

She had just wanted a chance to talk with Rose and see if she was okay. 

Bane looked down at the pale and trembling girl, “I have been more than generous.”

Bane didn’t allow her to hug either girl goodbye. Rose managed to not flinch when his hand soon found its way to wrap around the flesh of her upper arm and lead her from the room. 

“Do you need to use the facilities?” Bane asked as he walked Rose back to their shared room. 

“Yes, please,” she said, and he waited until she emerged with a freshly scrubbed face. 

Bane remained silent the rest of the way back to the room until he had secured the door closed and locked behind them. 

“Well, Margaret Rose?” came his voice in the quiet room. “Are you going to steal a knife from the kitchen?”


	6. Frozen Peas and Strong Tea

Rose whipped her head around to stare at him, words absent and the ability to speak paralyzed her vocal cords for a moment. “Were you listening?” she managed to stutter.

“Yes,” Bane answered as he took two large steps towards her. Rose had no time to raise her hands in defense as the back of his heavily scarred hand made contact with her face. 

Rose stumbled to the side and dropped to one knee, the floor seemed to raise up and kiss her face when his next strike landed. 

As Bane grabbed her arm and wrenched her to her feet, Talia’s words danced on daggered high heels through his conscious mind. “Make her fear you before she loves you.”

He fought to keep a wince from forming when he drove his fist into the soft flesh of her belly. Talia’s words competed to be the center of attention over Rose’s cry as her breath was forced from her lungs. 

“Make her fear you before she loves you.” 

Bane took a step back and waited until she captured some control of her breath. Rose looked up as Bane reached out towards her.

“Stop, please,” Rose pleaded as she raised both hands in the air.

“How is it possible that you ask me to stop, yet you won’t tell your friend to stop incessantly badgering and baiting you?” Bane asked as he enclosed her forearm in his massive grip   
and once again pulled her to her feet. 

Rose shook her head, feigning to not comprehend his question. She gave a high-pitched cry as a piercing pain shot to her fingertips when Bane squeezed her arm. “Please, don’t. 

Please don’t hurt me anymore,” Rose said as tears began to freely roll down her reddened and already bruising cheeks. 

“Make her fear you before she loves you.”

“Your friend gave you more than enough motivation to warrant at minimum a verbal rebuttal,” Bane said and added as he knocked her to the cold floor again. “You never begged her to stop.”

Rose cowered at Bane’s feet, coughing every other breath as coppery blood trickled down the back of her throat. He looked down at her fractured state, a broken little bird. 

Rose squeezed her eyes shut when she felt the rough pads of Bane’s fingertips under her chin. She didn’t resist him lifting her face to meet his, but she silently refused to open her eyes and meet his penetrating gaze. 

Bane looked down at Rose’s face, he watched a bright tear slip from her tightly closed eyes and roll down the side of her face. He felt an unfamiliar feeling wash through his body and felt a swell of repugnance for Talia’s instructions. 

“Make her fear you before she loves you.”

Rose was in bed for three days after Bane released her face, his fingers brushed over the soft skin under her chin. He scooped her up in his powerful arms and carried her to their shared mattress. 

Bane felt a dull rage wash over his senses as he tucked the covers around Rose’s battered and weeping form. He left the room after turning off the light and fought to not slam the door as he stormed through the hallways in a sea of whirling and conflicting emotions. 

As Bane sought out Barsad and an update on the next phase of the plan’s progress, back in their shared room, Rose trembled under the bed linen in the dark room. 

Barsad had been watching the progress of some derelict men that were working for a cot and hot meals. He could feel the anger radiating from Bane in dangerous waves as he approached.

As Barsad relayed the status of Talia’s master plan for Gotham, Bane was only partially listening. His thoughts were born from the foreign sensation of confusion, he had never found himself questioning anything that Talia had ever ordered.

Barsad passed Bane a tight roll of the city’s blueprints that had spiky handwriting notes at the corners. As he did, his eyes fell to the top of Bane’s knuckles and Rose’s blood that had settled into the grooves of each scar. Barsad quickly averted his eyes and returned his gaze out over the anonymous men milling about from every walk of life. Some worked for   
food and shelter, others because they had nowhere else to hide. 

Bane talked awhile longer with Barsad and then observed a small crew of men welding reinforcements to the staggering fleet of vehicles. He waited until it was very late before he returned to the room where Rose was shivering under the blankets but had finally fallen to sleep. 

Bane opened the door slowly, the hinges threatening to squeak with every centimeter the door moved. He spent a long time looking down at her sleeping and trembling form. 

The heavy flow of Venom that flowed through his veins made his nervous system dance. It further enhanced his night vision and he could easily see the damage he had brought forth to stain her porcelain skin. Bane turned and departed for a small amount of time before returning with a wet washcloth. He had been surprised by his own actions when he waited for the tap water to come to a warm and comforting temperature before saturating the cloth fibers.

He returned and squatted down by her side of the bed, it brought him closer to seeing the further blossoming and darkening bruises that covered her cheeks. Bane gingerly dabbed the cloth on her face and at the caked blood surrounding her nose. He had purposely held back with each of his strikes to her body but still managed to inflict a great amount of harm. 

Bane continued to wipe the wet rag across her face and neck and struggled with his battling thoughts in regard to following orders without question or the hint of a delay. 

The rest of the night and the next few days, Bane sat at the desk all night with the light on low. He couldn’t bring himself to crawl into bed with her since silent tears would begin to roll down her cheeks whenever he got too close. 

On the fourth morning, he woke her up and spoke to her in a gruff tone. “Your period of recuperation has come to an end, get dressed and I’ll take you to the kitchen.”  
Rose averted her eyes and nodded. She waited until he left the room before she crawled from the covers and slowly got dressed. She struggled into her long-sleeved shirt, crying out as she pulled the collar over her head. 

Bane opened the door when she limped across the room to knock on the door and walked her to the bathroom as he had many times before. When she closed herself in the small room with the chipped commode, she leaned close to the tarnished mirror and examined her face and neck. Rose lifted her shirt to see what she could of her body with the poor overhead lighting. 

She winced as she touched clusters of spider-web broken capillaries and other Goya impersonating dark bruising. Rose pulled her clothes back into place, hissing with discomfort when the rough fibers of the fabric brushed across her skin. 

Bane walked her to the kitchen when she finally emerged from the bathroom and left her with Erik for her usual workday. As soon as Bane departed, Erik shook his head and brought over a metal folding chair and gestured for her to sit. Rose gratefully settled in the hard chair as Erik crossed to the freezer and brought her back a bag of frozen peas. 

“For your face Suppen-Mädchen. (Soup Girl)”

Rose managed a half-smile and placed the frozen veggies over the sorest side of her face. Erik gave a satisfied nod and made her a cup of traditional German tea. He brought it back along with the battered remote control for the television. 

“Today, you may watch some television for a while Suppen-Mädchen. (Soup Girl)” 

Erik returned to chopping turnips and other root vegetables while talking to his cousin in Dusseldorf. 

Rose flipped through the channels and finally settled on a benign sitcom with a plethora of canned laughter. Her eyes were softly focused on the dusty screen but her mind daydreamed while sipping the strong flavored tea that Erik had heavily sweetened with honey and lightened with a splash of half and half. 

As Erik stirred a stainless-steel stockpot that was coming to a rolling boil, he would glance over at Rose occasionally and a near smile would come to his lips. She reminded him of his niece Anja who lived back in Germany and asked when he was coming to visit every time he talked with her on his outlandish long-distance plan. 

As she daydreamed a frown flitted across her forehead when she realized that she didn’t even know what day it was and if she had missed her prom. 

Erik shooed her away from the cutting board when she finished her tea and tied her apron strings in a bow. “Sit, you can work tomorrow.”

Rose shook her head and have him a grateful smile, “I should at least prepare his dinner.”

Erik nodded and let her work at her own slowed pace. She prepared what she felt was a lackluster meal. When Bane picked her up at the end of the day, he wordlessly took the tray from her arms and carried it back to their shared room. 

Once back in the room, Rose took her usual place at the small table with her back towards Bane. He noticed that she had prepared soup for herself as well and watched as she slowly consumed the warm, soothing liquid. 

Rose’s face and jaw ached but she managed to get down half the bowl where it sat well in her belly. She sat silent for a moment before speaking to him in a voice barely above a whisper and without turning around to face him. 

“May I go to bed now, please?” 

Bane stood from his chair and pulled the set of military grade handcuffs over to her. She flinched when his hand closed around her upper bicep and pulled back the bed covers. 

Talia’s orders moved through his head on a perpetual loop but so was the thought of her touching a certain well-dressed billionaire and offering her body up for the greater good. 

Days passed and Rose’s bruises began to slowly fade. Nearby, Jayne and Caroline continued their daily grueling existence of cleaning in exchange for the retention of their lives. 

Caroline’s anger and resentment grew with each article of clothing she had to fold and was perpetually fed with every push of the wet wood-handled mop. 

Rose’s fear slowly began to take a back seat to her continuous status quo. Each day, the same mantra played through her mind. 

“Now I wake up,” she’d think as Bane would wake her in the morning.

“Now I get dressed,” her thoughts would continue as she pulled on any number of monochromatic layers of thermal and wool clothing to combat the perpetual chilly bite in the air.

“Now I work,” Rose’s mind would replay dully as Bane dropped her off at the kitchen and transferred her to Erik’s watchful eyes. 

Rose found herself beginning to look forward to her time in the kitchen with Erik. Some days he would spend all day on the phone and hand her the remote and complete control   
over the menu. Other days they would laugh and tell dirty jokes, just in German in case the walls had ears. 

During Rose’s time in the kitchen, Bane found himself with more and more excuses to pass by there. His excuses became more frequently flimsy and see-through until he often found himself pausing altogether outside the kitchen doors. When time allowed, he’d listen to the sound of Rose’s joyful laughter often overlapped with Erik’s baritone chuckle. 

One afternoon, Bane found himself transfixed by the sound of Rose performing a spot-on impersonation of the voluptuous Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday Mr. President.” 

He found himself further intrigued when she performed an encore performance at Erik’s urging in a German version. 

On the other side of the doors, Rose sang into the end of a marinara sauce covered wooden spoon. 

Bane inched closer to the door ever so perceptibly as Rose’s voice sounded in a breathy version of the buxom blonde bombshell. 

“Alles Gute zum Geburtstag.” (Happy Birthday to you.) 

Bane slowed his breathing without even being conscious, as he let his eyes close to near slits and focused on the sound of her voice. 

“Alles Gute zum Geburtstag.” (Happy Birthday to you.) 

A frown creased his forehead when he felt an acidic spike of jealousy surge through his gullet that Erik was bearing witness to her smile and full-bodied laughter. Bane’s thoughts dipped into the veritable pantheon of lascivious lust as Rose’s voice dropped to a breathy musical whisper as she continued to sing birthday adorations in her family’s mother tongue. 

“Alles- Gute zum Geburtstag herr President.” (Happy Birthday Mr. President.) 

Bane’s hands closed into fists as he quelled the thoughts that swirled through his conscious mind and danced along his senses. As he listened to her finish the song, he remembered the soft feel of her body as he had hugged her to his chest and warded off the cold. 

Bane’s fingertips had memorized the supple press of her flesh under his touch and he debated throwing open the kitchen door just to see her seemingly happy and relaxed. He wanted to be part of the audience to the Rose who finished her birthday boy adulations and gave several mock bows that he was not privy. 

“Alles Gute zum Geburtstag.” (Happy Birthday to you.) 

For the next couple weeks, the status quo remained the same and Rose continued her passive litany as she was stirred from sleep and began her habitual day. 

“Now I wake up.”

“Now I use the bathroom.”

“Now I work.”

“Now I eat.”

“Now I sleep.”

In the kitchen, she continued to enjoy spending time with Erik who had become a friend, father figure and sounding board for whatever, she felt like discussing. Erik had a love   
obsession with his phone and would spend long stretches of the day talking to his family back in the Homeland. 

During his frequent absences from the kitchen, Erik would let her turn the radio or television to whatever program she wanted. At these times, Rose would feel a slight lurch in her chest cavity as she immediately flipped through the channels until she reached the local news. She longed to see her family or a mention of her missing. Rose would have been content to see news coverage on Caroline or Jayne as well and at first she wasn’t disappointed, but with the growing chaos in the streets of the Gotham, the police couldn’t search for the girls forever. 

Eventually Rose, Caroline and Jayne were moved to the latter half of the news and then towards the end. Soon there was no more mention of any of the girls and that was when Rose realized that this was her existence, for how long she didn’t know.


	7. Painful Choices

She was frowning one random morning when Erik returned from a lengthy chat with his niece. “What is wrong Suppen mädchen?” (Soup Girl)

Rose turned to him with a peculiar expression that could only be read as resignation coupled with defeat painted across her face. A moment in time when the inevitable wraps its suffocating tentacles around you and drowns you in the black bile of regret. 

Erik watched Rose’s gaze go soft as she looked at the wall behind him. Her eyes found a crack in the wall between a storage cabinet and wire rack with clean cutlery. She trailed her gaze along the faint lines that extended from the plaster’s laceration.

“Is Bane going to kill me or my friends?” Rose asked as she brought her eyes back to lock with his. 

Erik sighed and cleared his throat. “If he did Suppen mädchen, it would be because it was a direct order.”

As Rose digested Erik’s spoken words, close by, Jayne and Caroline were sorting and folding through large plastic baskets of freshly laundered linen. 

Caroline developed a deeper perpetual scowl every day their incarceration continued. Jayne had grown accustomed to the loud wake up calls and the long workdays. She had learned quickly that complaining and being resistant resulted in physical pain. A broken ring finger had taught her to keep her mouth shut and eyes down. She learned to work until she was told otherwise. 

Caroline was a slower learner and couldn’t seem to swallow the notion that she wasn’t going to be able to snap her fingers and summon her desired change. She had also experienced a broken finger, two fingers specifically. Caroline had thrown a spoiled princess tantrum and made the near fatal mistake of flipping the bird at one of the anonymous men who told her she was to clean the commodes. 

He had given her a toothy grin as he snapped her left middle finger. When he asked if she was done being a highfalutin cunt, Caroline showed her lack of understanding by using her still good finger to give him another solo salute. 

She realized too late the error of her ways, as the man’s grin faded to devilish glee and he made quick work of brutally breaking her other middle finger. Since then, Caroline still struggled to remember to bite her lip and Jayne still had to elbow her incessantly just to keep her quiet. 

The man they had both become familiar seeing, Barsad, splinted their fractured fingers and instructed them in a furtive whisper, to stay under the radar if they expected to remain living. Caroline wanted to shout a rebuttal of how this was no way to live, but even though Barsad smiled at her, she feared what must exist underneath. She had concluded that anyone that worked for that ferocious masked monster of a man, must have their own set of kinks or certainly be a little unhinged themselves.

As Caroline and Jayne continued their daily monotonous existence, Rose continued to live her own created routine and life. 

Rose stopped trying to keep track of how many days had passed since she was pulled into this generally subterranean world. Time continued to pass, and each day started and 

ended the same. 

One day as Bane retrieved Rose from the kitchen, he shook his head when she approached with their dinner trays. 

“The food can wait.”

Rose’s anxiety grew as she followed Bane up a few flights of stairs and to a large circular room with a bright map of Gotham unrolled on a narrow table. 

Rose’s eyes grew wide as she saw the same dark-haired woman that she had seen often in conversation with Bane. She remembered hearing her high heels click away as she had been lying on the mattress after her near attack. 

Talia stood when Bane led Rose into the room. “Ah, here you are upright and healthy,” Talia said with a bright and artificial smile. 

Rose stood unblinking and watched as Talia turned to a computer that had several lengthy commands typed across the screen. 

“Come here girl,” Talia said with a smile but in a dangerous tone. 

Rose quickly went to Talia’s side, worried what would happen when the smile evaporated. 

“This little button right here will turn off the power at City Hall,” Talia said and tapped the “enter” key. Rose didn’t follow or know if she was supposed to reply. 

Talia didn’t expect a response and continued after a small pause. “This,” she said, as she typed a few more numeral combinations and hovered her slim index finger over the “enter” key again. “Will bring the whole building down, right now they’re running around trying to get the power back on. They never noticed the C4 explosives,” Talia said with a soft chuckle as Rose’s eyes grew wide. 

Bane watched the two females, trying to keep his eyes void of any emotion. 

Rose’s mouth fell open and she called out a soft, “no.” 

Talia’s smile dried up and was replaced by a worse grin. “You know what?” she asked Rose who could only shake her head dumbly. 

“You push it,” Talia said in a sing song voice. 

Rose covered her mouth with a hand and shook her head and tried to take a step back. Talia’s hand shot out and captured her wrist. “You will depress that button,” Talia said with a snarl.

“Please, no,” Rose cried as she continued to beg. “Please don’t make me hurt anyone.”

Talia shot her eyes to Bane. “Make her do it,” she demanded. 

Talia released Rose’s wrist and walked a few feet away as Bane approached, a content smile already plastered across her face. 

Bane could see Rose’s fear began to fill her eyes; he grabbed the back of her neck with what looked more forceful than it was in actuality. He leaned down and talked low enough that Talia couldn’t hear everything.

“You need to push that button Margaret Rose, or I will have to hurt you. It will be bad since Talia is present, you will bleed.” he whispered.

Rose shivered as a wave of nausea swept over her. Talia nodded with smug and dangerous satisfaction. All she’d been able to hear when she had strained her ears was, “I..…hurt…..bleed.” 

As Talia looked at Bane and what she thought was his painful death grip on the pale and softly crying girl, her thoughts were on a certain billionaire in his tailored suits. She smiled thinking of Bruce’s invitation for a late dinner and the new dress she had bought for the occasion. 

Rose pushed the button as she felt Bane’s hand on the back of her neck. Her pulse pounded in her neck and he found himself counting the frantic beats as she condemned many to a fiery death with the single press of a button.

The moment Rose depressed the “enter” key, Bane released his gentle hold on her neck and stepped back from her. 

As soon as Talia was satisfied with the reports that beginning pouring in over the police scanner, she dismissed her. Rose turned away from Talia’s cruel gaze which was another mistake. As soon as she looked away, Talia gave Rose a hard shove in between her shoulder blades and watched her fall to the unforgiving floor.   
Talia looked down and gave her a disgusted look before she leveled her gaze at Bane. “Take care of this sniveling brat.” 

Bane closed a massive hand around one of Rose’s upper arms and tried to lift her without appearing to be soft in any way. It wouldn’t have mattered as Talia was already on her way out to go and get ready for her billionaire dinner date.

As Bane and Rose were on their way back to their shared room, Rose bumped into Bane as she wiped blood from her lip with her charcoal grey sleeve. She mumbled an apology and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

Bane was silent until they reached the room. Once inside, he told her to sit down on the bed and remove her zippered sweatshirt. 

Bane would have chuckled at her frozen fright if she weren’t already petrified, instead he tried to think of something to say that was comforting as he retrieved the navy blue battered first-aid kit from a desk drawer.

“There is blood on it Margaret Rose. Now I’m going to check your lip,” he said in a tone that he tried to make smooth, but it still carried a brute abruptness. 

Rose sat with her back ramrod straight, barely a breath passing through her lungs as he examined her face. 

Bane folded a square of gauze in half and wiped at the blood that had pooled in the corner of her lower lip. He soaked up the blood with a mild amount of pressure exerted by his 

index finger, while his other fingertips rested on her lower cheek and line of her jaw. 

He relished her soft skin under his touch and prolonged his scrutiny of the tiny cut on her mouth that had already stopped bleeding. 

“May I go to sleep now?” Rose asked and Bane let his eyes find hers. He saw her internal agony at what she had been forced to do and let his fingers linger a moment longer on her skin and savored the caress as he nodded his consent. 

Rose waited for him to fetch the handcuffs and chain her in place for the night but was surprised when he made no move in that direction. 

“You have earned back your privilege of no lock and key, but you need to be diligent to keep it that way,” Bane said seeing her hesitate to get into bed without the rigid, metal confines. 

Rose nodded and crawled under the covers as Bane returned the first-aid kit to the lower desk drawer and then turned his attention to a stack of correspondence with Daggett Industries. 

Rose had been asleep for a few hours when the need for sleep started to knock at Bane’s body. His painful back protested angrily as he stood from the hard-backed chair and lifted the blankets gently as he crawled into the bed next to her.

Once settled under the linen, he pulled her body close. Rose stirred at being in the middle of his warm embrace and initially froze in his powerful grasp. Her back was flush against his chest and she could feel the solidity of his strength through her clothes.

Bane stayed still as she relaxed ever so slightly in his arms before he decided to up the proverbial ante. He found himself close to holding his breath as he ran his rough padded fingertips through her hair.

With each pass of his fingers through the strands of her tangled hair, she relaxed just barely perceptibly in his arms. As the sun rose above Gotham, where Rose couldn’t feel its warm rays through the thick walls, at that moment lying in his formidable arms, the faint flickers of trust were awakened within her heart.

Rose fell into a light sleep in the circle of Bane’s warm embrace. A knock came at the door to their shared room and Bane crawled from the bed to find Talia on the other side of the door.

Bane stepped aside to let Talia enter the room. Her eyes flitted over briefly to Rose’s sleeping form before turning to address Bane.

As Talia walked past him, Bane caught the faint scent of a masculine and woodsy cologne. His forehead pulled into a deeper and deeper frown as she spoke. Her cultured voice had the power to manipulate his emotions. 

Today though, whenever Talia would turn her back to pace the room, Bane’s eyes would slide over to Rose’s sleeping form and the even rise and fall of her side. Bane had tucked the bed linen around her when he had risen to answer Talia’s knocking. Bane gave another quick glance at Rose, as she slept with her back to him before Talia turned towards him. 

“Those other girls could help leverage some wallets open. They‘re not worth that much besides their sex.”

As Bane and Talia continued to converse, the combination of Talia’s dulcet tones and Bane’s melodically intriguing rumblings culled Rose from the land of sleep. She split her focus on keeping her breathing steady and straining her ears to capture each of their spoken words.

“Too many hostages is a liability,” Talia said as Rose suppressed a shiver. “What does that mean for my future?” she thought as Bane remained silent and Talia’s voice continued too low for Rose to decipher. 

Rose heard the door’s hinges squeal when Bane opened it for Talia to leave. Rose decided to play the part of the all-in Las Vegas high-roller and turned a centimeter at a time until she could just barely see over her right shoulder. She slowed her breathing and watched Talia reach out and brush her slim fingers tipped with glossy painted artificial nails down the front of Bane’s thickly coiled metallic mask. 

Rose could hear the soft click of Talia’s silk-wrapped nails along the brushed metal of Bane’s mask. A million thoughts and questions were born in Rose’s conscious mind at Talia’s brief contact with the cold and unforgiving metal. The graphic interplay of Bane’s matte gun metal grey mask with onyx colored joints and the startling contrast of Talia’s soft and cottony pink nails was intimate. 

Bane continue to stare through the open doorway long after the sound of Talia’s Gucci heels receded. 

Bane didn’t feel the slight weight of Rose’s gaze as Talia left his line of sight and left, presumably on her way to plan another date with the eccentric billionaire with the taste for expensive caviar. 

As Bane watched Talia’s form vanish around a corner, his mind called forth an old memory. Rose served as witness to Bane’s eyes close as he shut the door and relived a piece of the past with graphic pictorial eloquence behind his eyes.

Behind his closed eyelids he was back at the bottom of Pena Dura, being pulled down to the dirty and unforgiving ground as young Talia climbed to freedom and in search of her father. 

“Goodbye,” played on perpetual repeat in his head as his body remembered the sound of his bones breaking and cracking. The feel of his skin tearing as the splintered ends of his bones burst through the skin of his thighs as his femurs broke. His forearms recalled the agonizing sensation of his jaw becoming dislocated and his nose exploding in a bloody spray under a closed fist.

“Goodbye,” played in his ears as he came back to the plane of reality and looked over and caught Rose staring at him.

Rose gave a sharp and surprised intake of breath when Bane’s eyes were suddenly on her. She swallowed hard as the shadows fought for control of his face as his eyes settled on her. “I’ll get dressed for work now,” she said nervously and sat up and pulled her boots from under the bed. 

“No,” Bane said and took a couple steps toward her. He turned on the ugly desk lamp and the shadows were buried in the bright spill of light. 

“No?” Rose asked when Bane didn’t elaborate. 

“No work today,” he barely expounded. “Get dressed and we’ll leave.”


	8. Thank You

Rose’s face drained of color as her mind immediately painted the worse scenarios and completely misread his tone as homicidal. 

Bane could feel the waves of anxiety spill from her and he saw that she misunderstood his words completely. He hurried to find a comforting statement to stop the backsliding before it became an avalanche. He wanted to stop the curtain of fear from sliding across her eyes. 

Bane smiled briefly under his mask as his mind produced a snapshot memory of her body relaxing against him in the middle of the night as her body fell into a deep sleep. He had reveled in the feel of Rose’s warm body sag back against him. Bane had moved his hand perceptibly to rest against and span her belly as he counted each of her soft inhalations. 

Bane closed the remaining distance between and knelt down to her level. “No harm shall come to you Margaret Rose, I thought you might enjoy some fresh air and a bit of sun.”

Rose nodded slightly and was able to breathe a little easier when the tension in her body eased somewhat. Bane left her to dress in a steel grey long-sleeved thermal shirt and dark cargo pants with roomy pockets on the sides of the thighs. She partially zipped a hooded sweatshirt and performed her usual three sharp knocks on her side of the door to indicate she was dressed. 

Bane pushed open the door and looked her over as he walked her to the bathroom. She spent a bit of extra time brushing her hair and scrubbing her face so she could quiet her whirring mind. 

Rose finally emerged from the bathroom and Bane looked her over when she wasn’t looking towards him. Her extra attention to running the plastic brush through her hair resulted in an intoxicating shine and brought the invited perception of softness to each strand. 

Bane found himself distracted by the strands that escaped the low bun at the base of her neck, he found himself looking forward to going to bed when he would be able to pull her body closer and coax her trust to further grow. 

Bane walked beside her until Barsad drove up in a faded blue pickup truck. Rose slid to the middle of the bench seat and Bane closed the door as Barsad steered them into the daylight and towards the coastline. 

Rose squinted as the bright light assaulted her eyes, once her eyes began to adjust, she looked around and tried to figure out where they were headed. 

She kept replaying the image of that woman touching his mask and the way his eyes followed her retreating form. A frown formed between Rose’s eyebrows when Barsad stopped the truck near a walk-up organic coffee stand that was near a state beach. 

Bane pushed open the truck door and held out his hand towards her. Rose paused and stared at the outstretched hand he offered. Her eyes zeroed in on a stray thread that had worked itself loose of the edging of the half-gloves he wore. The inky black thread had come free of the stitching on the webbing between his thumb and index finger.  
Rose extended her hand and closed it around his as she climbed out of the truck’s cab. “What are we doing here?” she asked before thinking. 

“Something better to look at for a while, consider it a late gift for your past birthday,” Bane said and began leading her towards a rocky outlook point and mumbled lowly to Barsad who headed in the direction of the coffee stand. 

Rose watched Barsad order from the denim-jacket wearing barista as Bane kept his hand firmly closed around hers.

Bane watched Rose take a few deep inhales of the coastal air as Barsad jogged back with a brown recycled paper cup and parchment paper wrapped pastry. 

Rose mumbled her thanks as Barsad wordlessly passed her the coffee stand purchases. She took a sip as Barsad hung back a good amount of yardage as Bane led Rose to the hard-packed sand. 

“How did you know I liked this kind of coffee?” she asked as she took a sip of the near-scalding soy white chocolate mocha. 

Bane pretended to not hear her and tugged her away from a further reaching wave that washed close to their feet. She peeked in the paper and saw the chocolate croissant.

Bane kept his face averted from hers as his smile behind his mask reached his eyes. He couldn’t tell her that he knew about a lot of her likes and dislikes from hours of eavesdropping on her while she was talking with Erik. 

Rose sipped at her caffeinated chocolate liquid delicacy with real whipped cream. As the sweet sugar and rich chocolate washed over her taste buds, her mind compiled question after unasked question. 

Bane caught her frequent and hurried glances and the concentration of what must have been a tumultuous sandstorm in her head. 

“Do you have something specific on your mind?” Bane asked as she took a long sip of the comforting coffee in its recycled paper urn. 

Rose swallowed the coffee and cleared her throat. “That woman; are you? I mean, is she?” Rose stopped and started to say.

“Are you asking if we are intimate?” Bane asked keeping all traces of amusement from his voice and smiling under his mask as a furious blush filled her face. 

Bane shook his head. “No Margaret Rose, I am only intimate with pain.” 

Rose cleared her throat and mumbled something unintelligible at Bane’s statement. 

While Rose turned her attention to her parchment wrapped pastry with its flaky and buttery crumbs, Bane thought of the last time his sexual need had arisen. He had found a phony named whore and was fine with burying his cock in the paid for cunt after she had raised her skirt and spread her thighs. 

Rose almost choked on her long sip of the sweet concoction at his abrupt statement. “Tell me about your lover.” 

“He’s, um, in college down south,” Rose stammered and then took a big bite of her croissant so she wouldn’t have to expound right away. 

“How did you meet him?” Bane asked when she washed down her bite with a hot sip of the mocha. 

“On this online dating site,” Rose said with a little more confidence behind her lying words. 

“Why did your friend make the accusation that he is false?” 

Rose shrugged and blinked her eyes rapidly. “I guess because he always cancels plans at the last minute and they still haven‘t met him.”

Bane saw through her carefully constructed lie from her first stammer but let her ramble on about her fake lover with his impeccable college attendance. They continued to walk along the shore and Rose tossed her empty cup and wadded up napkin in a faded green trash receptacle. 

They were both silent for a while until Rose stopped and looked up at him, raising a hand to shade her eyes from the high afternoon sun. 

“Thank you for this,” she said as she met Bane’s eyes and gestured down the coastline. 

“You’re welcome,” he said as they started on their way back to the truck. Barsad moved ahead of them and had the truck idling when they settled back on the vinyl bench seat. 

While Barsad drove them back, Caroline and Jayne had another repetitive underground day of scrubbing floors and cleaning commodes. Both girls only had a mismatched pair of latex gloves each and Jayne’s left-handed glove had developed a pinhole size leak in the index finger. 

As Barsad parked the truck, Bane escorted Rose back to their room. Once there, Bane looked through a new stack of papers that had been waiting outside his door and glanced over when he caught movement from the corner of his eye.

His gaze snapped a freeze frame of Rose as she stretched her arms high overhead and then pressed her hands into her lower back. He watched her knead her fingers into the gentle curve just under her waistline and heard her utter a low groan.

“Is your back troubling you?” Bane asked as he set a crisp note from Talia face down on the desktop. 

Rose dropped her hands from her lower back and turned to look at him. “I think I lifted too much yesterday. There were a few sacks of potatoes that I moved and some sacks of rice and flour,” she said with a shrug.

Bane nodded and went to the lower righthand desk drawer and pulled out a bright orange tube of turpentine oil with a volcanic trade name. 

“Lay down on the bed,” he said as he walked towards her with the half-empty tube of pain relief liniment. 

Rose cleared her throat and tried to not flinch as he approached. She nodded and laid down on her belly as Bane knelt by the bed for the second time that day. Rose fought a verbal protest when she felt his fingertips with their toughened skin push her shirt up her back and exposed her supple flesh to his gaze. 

Bane’s eyes never left the intoxicating bare expanse of her skin as he poured the liniment with its battling harsh and sweet stench into his palm. 

Rose froze upon the first pass of his massive and sturdy hands as they moved across her skin. Eventually she relaxed under his touch and her muscles loosened under the powerful massage from his strong hands. 

Bane’s touch coaxed a soft and satisfied moan to stumble from between her lips as his fingertips kneaded the tense muscles of her lower back. He watched with amusement dancing in his eyes as her whole body flushed and the skin under his hands took on a becoming pink hue. 

“Don’t be ashamed of your body’s reactions,” Bane said in a low melodic whisper as his hands never stopped moving across her skin.

Rose didn’t reply and felt her heartbeat increase exponentially as Bane’s hands moved ever so slowly higher up her back with each circular sweep. 

Bane found her velvety skin enticing and boldly slid his hands up and skimmed over the back of her plain cotton bra strap and traced the outline of her shoulder blades. 

“Turn over,” Bane said and lifted his hands from her hot, flushed skin. 

Rose shook her head wordlessly in the small space of time before speaking. “I don’t have a lover in college,” she whispered into the pillow. 

“I’m aware of that,” Bane said with a smile evident in his voice at her muffled confession. 

Rose averted her eyes and slowly turned over until she was lying on her back under Bane’s gaze. 

His raw, expressive eyes drank in her enthralling naiveté. Bane’s eyes which held the color of toasted hazelnuts held tinges of alternating flecks of green and gold moved from the crown of her head to her hands which held onto the top blanket in a furious grip. 

Bane placed a couple fingers under the supple skin of her jaw and lifted her face, so she was forced to meet his eyes. 

He held her trapped in his gaze as he joined her on the bed and noted the paralyzing fear that caused her body to grow tense and rigid. Rose raised her arms and pressed her hands against Bane’s broad chest. She could feel the heat of his skin through the black long-sleeved shirt that fit him like a second skin. 

He gently encircled her wrists and pushed her arms out to the side and pinned them to the bed. Bane held her hard enough to keep her in place but not to hurt her as he further shifted and insinuated himself between her legs, forcing her to spread her thighs apart under the weight of his body.

Rose gasped in surprise and squeezed her eyes shut when she felt the weight of Bane’s lower body against her. “Don’t be afraid Margaret Rose,” he whispered and released one of her wrists to brush some errant hair off of her forehead. 

Bane closed his eyes as the soft tendrils kissed the scarred skin of his fingers. “Don’t be afraid,” he repeated and tucked the stray hair back behind her ear. 

Rose shivered under the pass of his fingertips along the top of her ear. Bane longed to taste her lips and inhale her sweet scent. He rose from the bed suddenly, releasing Rose and her eyes flew open when she felt his weight disappear. 

She watched as he walked over to the desk and turned off the light, blanketing the room in near darkness. She heard him walk back to the bed and felt the mattress dip with his weight and soon found herself back in his warm embrace. 

Rose heard a series of metallic snapping and clicking noises and realized that he was removing his mask. She squinted her eyes in the dark, unable to make out any of his features. 

She soon found herself very distracted as he pressed his naked face against her neck and inhaled deeply. 

Rose gasped when she felt his teeth graze the side of her neck, he gave a low appreciative moan as pushed her thighs apart and settled himself against her again. She found she couldn’t form words as Bane started to kiss a trail down her neck and settle over her rapidly beating pulse.

Bane’s mouth lifted from her neck and found hers, she could feel the rigid scar tissue that crossed his lips. Rose tentatively returned his kiss; he felt her lips move hesitantly under his. Bane pulled her closer to his body and rocked his pelvis against hers as he deepened the kiss until Rose could feel each incised line running across his upper and lower lip. 

Rose broke the kiss and mumbled a breathless protest when she felt Bane’s hands fumbling at button of her pants. “I haven’t had any lovers,” she gasped and dropped her hands to grip his thick wrists and stall his movements.

With the level of Venom built up and pumping through Bane’s body it increased the clarity of his night vision. His brilliant eyes as he looked down at Rose, his eyes searching her face in the dark. 

Bane lifted his hands from her waist and wrapped his arms around her and brought her closer, he lowered his mouth and captured her lips. He smiled as Rose carefully brought her arms up to hesitatingly close around him. 

“I shall not force you to do anything Margaret Rose,” Bane murmured and smoothed a hand up the back of neck, through her hair so he could cradle the back of her skull.


	9. Rodent Voyeur

A few weeks passed and all of the girl's lives continued at their same repetitive pace. Each day and night blended with each other to form a grey, bleak and predictable present and future state of existence. Caroline and Jayne faced day after day of buckets filled with hot sudsy water and spray bottles of pungent blue window cleaner. One random Wednesday evening as Bane was escorting Rose from the kitchen back to their shared room, unbeknownst to him Talia had arrived a short time earlier and was looking for him.

Talia came around the corner and was about to call out to Bane when the smallest of his gestures stopped her voice dead in her throat. Her heart seemed to stumble to a near halt as brilliant green envy filled her head and soul.

Talia had rounded the corner and been the solitary witness to Bane brushing his fingertips down the length of Rose's arm as he walked down the hall next to her. Talia's eyes narrowed as she caught the shy smile appear on Rose's lips as she looked up at Bane.

Talia backed away quietly and returned to her high-end luxury sedan. She dialed Barsad's number and instructed him in her commanding dulcet tones that he and Bane needed to report to a location several hours away. "Immediately." Talia gave Barsad directions and ended the call with a fearsome and pleased expression painted across her face.  


Talia smiled down at her watch when less than two minutes later, Barsad and Bane as well as a few other anonymous men tore away in a few paneled vans and a Humvee. Talia waited exactly three more minutes before marching back underground. She made a determined beeline towards the room that Rose was now sharing with Bane. She was going to stomp out any new growth, hobble anything that dared to breathe without her express permission.

Talia had a master key ring to every room, drawer and cabinet. She unlocked the door and caught Rose by surprise as she was unlacing her boots and peeling off her thick, wool socks.

Rose paused as Talia closed the door behind her and slipped the keys back into her pocket and gave Rose the smile that came nowhere close to reaching her eyes.

"Well, you are looking healthier than the last time I saw you," Talia started with her cultured and exotic voice, her features set in a nasty sneer.

Rose swallowed hard and tried to smile through her battling nerves and fears. She kept deathly still and silent as Talia continued to address her.

"Tell me girl, what services are you performing to have the pleasure of retaining your life?"

Rose swallowed hard and flinched as Talia repeated the question and slapped her slim open hand on top of the desk.

"Well? How are you keeping a hold of your pathetic little life?" Talia demanded in a low, seething tone.

"I'm co..cooking," Rose stammered and managed to add before her breath disappeared. "I cook and clean every day."

Talia scoffed and brushed an errant strand of her hair behind her ear. "What other tasks do you perform?" she asked with dangerous malice staining each word.

Talia took Rose's confused silence for impertinence and closed the distance between them with several long strides. A small cry escaped Rose when Talia's hand shot out and slapped her loudly across the face. Rose barely had a chance to take another breath before Talia's open palm found the other side of her face.

"What else are you doing?" Talia demanded in a louder tone as she grabbed the back of Rose's head and pulled her roughly from the mattress where she stumbled to her knees. 

Rose winced as her kneecaps hit the unforgiving concrete ground. A few small spikes of pain traveled up her thighs upon contact with the damp, grey cement.

Rose grabbed backwards blindly at Talia when she felt her hand close again on the back of her head.

"What else?" Talia whispered in her ear as she yanked Rose up and around to face her and delivered a backhand across her reddening face.

"Are you?" she asked in a louder tone and dropped her fist to drive into Rose's belly.

"Doing?" Talia asked loudly as the breath was driven from Rose's body and she returned to her knees. Talia stood over Rose who pitifully raised her hands in front of her face.

"You're not worth anything. You lack strength, you are weak," Talia whispered in a spiteful tone and spit on the ground next to Rose's arm. The fat drop of spittle left through 

Talia's warm lipstick coated lips and landed with a sickening plop next to Rose's elbow.

Rose curled into the fetal position as Talia rained her fists and feet against her.

Talia looked down at Rose who was openly crying on the chilly, hard floor. She exited the room and slammed the door, locking it behind her. "That'll teach her to smile," Talia thought with a smug grin as she strode through the hallways and checked on her master plan's progress.

A little while after Rose's breath had returned to her lungs and her tears had waned, Bane and Barsad arrived at the destination Talia had dictated. The address she had given Barsad turned out to be an abandoned steel mill where a small group of mercenaries from Sudan were waiting to exchange a suitcase of cash for a chemical formula that Daggett Industries had recently acquired.

The exchange went smoothly, and Bane saw that there was no reason for him to be there, his presence wasn't remotely necessary, and he felt an unsettling sensation settle in the pit of his stomach. Bane turned to Barsad and stated that they were returning to the control center of sorts.

As Bane sat shotgun on the long return trip, Talia dialed Bruce Wayne and slipped into Miranda Tate's skin when he answered the phone. "Bruce," she purred. "I just have to stop by my loft and pick up a few things, I'm looking forward to seeing you this evening at the Waldorf."

The sun had nearly set by the time Bane returned.

As Bruce was pouring a glass of Dom Perignon for Miranda at their reserved table in the highfalutin restaurant of the equally pretentious hotel, Bane's footsteps carried him forward through the sewer with a growing urgency as he walked to the room he shared with Rose.

Bane opened the door and walked in to find Rose reading in bed. She had the covers pulled up around her and looked properly cocooned. He had offered her the pick of the bookcase that dominated one of the damp concrete walls in the past. Bane frowned when he saw the odd and deliberate way her hair hung over more than half her face obscuring one of her light brown eyes.

He nodded at her in greeting and sat down behind his desk, embarrassed somewhat by his rushed entrance when she appeared to be okay.

For the next couple hours, Bane reviewed notes and blueprints and frequently raised his eyes to scrutinize Rose. She had been quiet, speaking only if she was answering his direct questions. He found himself growing irritated that she wouldn't turn to face him when she replied. The thought that she was hiding something was conceived and grew in his mind.

Eventually Rose began to yawn and set the book aside after securing a bookmark she had quickly fashioned from a sheet of lined paper.  
Bane's eyes fell on the title, "Helter Skelter."

"Do you like Bugliosi's recounting of the trial?" Bane asked. He frowned when she mumbled a "yeah," and slipped down under the falsely perceived safety of the covers facing away from him.

He stood from the desk, the plans and detailed instructions from Talia forgotten in the blink of an eye. Bane walked over to the empty side of the bed without turning off the desk light.

"Are you unwell Margaret Rose?" he asked as he settled on the mattress beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

Rose stiffened and clumsily brushed his hand off her shoulder when she was reminded of her bruised face and the ugliness that she thought it rendered to her.

"I'd like to go to sleep. Please?" she whispered softly.

"No," she said bordering on begging as Bane gripped her shoulder tighter and tried to get her to face him without resorting to brute force. Rose ducked her head, trying to keep her damaged skin obscured in the soft fall of her hair. Each strand held the color of a raven's vibrant pinfeathers.

"Why are you hiding from me?" Bane asked, lessening his grip on her shoulder as she started to shake with her crying. "You should never hide from me," he added in an almost gentle tone and she curled further into a fetal position trying to get out of his grasp.

"Please," Rose cried again with desperate hysteria; her voice muffled as she pulled the covers over her head. "Don't."

"Who did this to you?" Bane demanded when he forced Rose onto her back and could see her bruised nose accompanied by swollen eggplant colored splotches around her right eye. 

She closed her eyes at the intense maniacal glow that filled his eyes as her nose was filled with the woodsy and all masculine scent emanating from his skin.

"Who?" he demanded harsher than intended, lifting her chin to meet his gaze. His touch forced a gasp from her throat, and she shook her head furiously. She remembered Talia's departing words, "I will make you watch me kill your whole family before I kill you should you speak a single word about this."

All thoughts of speaking rapidly vanished from Rose's mind when Bane traced his fingertips along her jaw line with a gentle hesitation and tried to soften the edges of his words as he spoke.

"Who did this to you Margaret Rose?" he asked as he moved his hand to cup her cheek. Bane's eyes never left Rose's, even as he felt the hot and swollen skin under his palm.

Rose initially shook her head slowly. Her chest started to hitch from his close proximity and soft touch. Rose also found herself realizing, pleasantly, that her aches and pain were receding as her senses were assaulted by his presence.

Rose stuttered at first in reply. She found herself distracted by the dull glow from his intense hazel orbs. "It's because I lack strength," she finally whispered and pulled her gaze away from his.

Rose dropped her eyes to the exposed skin of his neck and the barest peek at his collarbones that were wrapped in a hearty amount of muscle tissue. "It's because I'm weak," she whispered and took a conscious deep breath and felt herself pulled into the intoxicating aroma that clung to his body.

Rose closed her eyes and added in a small voice that rode a wave of shame. "I am not worth anything."

As Rose parroted Talia's words, Bane knew there was only person that would articulate those specific statements. There was only deliberateness and cruel indifference behind those words. He heard an incessant buzzing in his ears and a tingle fill his body as neural pathways lit a never-used path in his brain and he felt the battling of internal conflicting emotional tides.

Rose kept her eyes closed as Bane initially remained in silence, his palm had stilled against her cheek and she heard his breathing steadily increase.

"She is incorrect."

Rose's left eye flew open and her right opened as much as it was capable upon the conclusion of his statement. Bane's eyes caught hers and held her in a paralyzed stasis as he brushed her hair free from obscuring her broken blood vessel decorated skin.

She held her breath as he moved away and extinguished the light. The tacky lampshade was soon hidden in the swift veil of darkness.

Bane returned to Rose's side and pulled her close, crushing her to his body. She was thankful for the lack of light as color filled her face when she felt her breasts press into his broad chest.

"She is incorrect," Bane repeated as his hands left her body to move quickly at the straps and buckles that kept his metallic mask firmly in place.

Rose looked up into the dark where she thought his face would be as he rubbed a rough thumb across her lower lip. The calloused pad traced along the blush pink flesh of her lips as her breath slowed under his touch.

Bane lowered his mouth to hers and dropped his hands to her waist. A moan fell from her lips as he tugged at her layers of warm clothing and issued a feral growl as his hands found the bare flesh of her belly. He slid a hand up the smooth skin of her back and nipped lightly at the skin of her neck.

Rose gasped as he pressed his lips against the pulse in her neck and she tentatively let her hands trail from his shoulders, down the sides of his waist, where she let her hands rest gently on the firm flesh under the wrap of his snug long-sleeved shirt.

Rose felt a surprised squeal escape her lips when Bane suddenly pulled her under him and insinuated himself between her thighs. She felt her face burst into a full blush as he pushed her thighs apart.

Rose bit her lip and with careful hesitation let her fingertips dance from his waist a bit lower and boldly brush across the front of his cargo pants.

"Margaret Rose," he growled and squeezed his hands into the supple flesh of her hips.

Rose gasped as he thrust his hips forward and with his feline quality night vision searched her face in the dark room. Her eyes were soft and unfocused, but he saw the trace of fear staining her features.

Bane dropped his head to her shoulder. Her breath was warm against his ear and his cock felt as though it would burst from behind his zippered pants. He inhaled her clean scent and spoke against the flushed skin of her slim neck.

"She is incorrect," Bane whispered as the first returning spikes of pain begin to plant and fester in his lower back and spread out and conquer from there. Rose frowned in the dark as the sound of pain filled his voice and threatened to choke each of his spoken syllables.

She felt the bed shift when he moved to the edge and attached his mask back into place and took a few breaths that washed his system in the narcotic inhalant. He settled back onto the mattress and immediately pulled her back into his heavily muscled arms.

Bane was relieved when the barest of tension flitted through her form before she relaxed against him. Rose succumbed to sleep easily in Bane's embrace, while he remained awake for a bit and listened to her breathing even out as she descended the levels of deeper and deeper sleep.

Bane and Rose's whispered conversation and intimacy was not free from ears and eyes. This mouth would not be speaking though. The large Rattus rattus sat in the corner of the dank room and nibbled on a crust of wheat bread that had escaped Rose's plate a few days in the past. The long-tailed Old-World black rat was considerably large for its size. Most in its family weighed no more than a pound, but this chubby rodent tipped the scale at nearly two pounds. The pudgy rat waddled off to the crack in the concrete wall that he was barely able to squeeze through with his gluten-rich acquisition for perhaps a midnight snack.


	10. Nod Where Appropriate

The next morning Rose stirred in Bane's warm embrace and groaned loudly at the ache around her right eye that sprang to life at the first breath of awakening. She stifled any future sound when she felt Bane shift and also start to wake behind her.

Rose's sudden noise had pulled him from a brief period of sleep. Her painful groan had sounded with astonishing volume in the concrete walled room. The damp grey walls were pitted with cracks that resembled the human body's system of veins and arteries. Fat droplets of condensation formed slowly in the room and eventually slid down the walls and pooled in the dank corners.

Bane's deep voice reverberated through his chest and she could feel the pulse of each of his spoken syllables through her layers of clothing. Rose closed her eyes as each of his musically mechanical words filled the room with a gentle rumble. "You may take the morning off to rest."

Rose half-smiled and sleepily shook her head. "No, I'll be fine. Besides," she added with a yawn. "I'm kinda hungry and I really don't want another bowl of that tasteless slop." She had found her version of the nutritional slop was fairly palatable and a day in bed probably wouldn't make much difference to how to she felt.

Bane settled one of his large hands on her waist and pulled her body closer as a low chuckle chimed through the front of his metallic mask.

"I'll leave you to dress," he added as he climbed off the mattress with a low groan at the perpetual ache in his lower back.

Rose opened her mouth to inquire about what was hurting him but quickly bit her lip before she could make a single audible sound. She frowned as she tried to figure out why she would even think to ask such a question.

Bane gave her one last glance before he left her to change in privacy. He caught her confused expression before she realized he was watching her. Rose immediately fixed a benign look on her face and ducked her head. Bane found a certain intoxicating amusement in her embarrassment as he closed the door.

After Rose had changed and knocked in the expected fashion, Bane reentered the room to find her in her usual clothes for a day in the often bone-cold kitchen. She had put on her one of two pairs of dark pants and layered two long-sleeved thermal shirts. Bane escorted her to the kitchen as he did daily and stopped at the cramped bathroom.

As they had walked down the dank halls, Bane perceptibly slowed until he was walking a bit behind her and let his eyes fall to the back of her neck. Rose had pulled her hair into a low bun and he watched with growing intrigue as a few of the twisted tendrils escaped and danced in the air before falling flat.

Bane waited outside the bathroom door as Rose went through her morning rituals and paused as she rinsed the toothpaste residue with a mouthful of the tepid tap water. She stared at her reflection and let her eyes roam across the damage Talia had done with her manicured hands and their slim, deadly fingers.

Rose leaned closer to her reflection until her breath made a small foggy circle on the mirror's surface. She ran a fingertip softly over the red and purple skin surrounding her right eye. The initial bruise had been given life by a smattering of busted capillaries. It had blossomed into a deep eggplant centered bruise and had sprouted spider-shaped streaks of an equally startling and complimentary deep-sea shade of blue.

From outside the flimsy bathroom door, Bane heard Rose's sharp inhale and stifled gasp when her finger swept around the perimeter of her skin's vivid discoloration.

"Margaret Rose? Are you unwell?" he called through the closed door.

Rose heard his words, but her tongue was strangled, and her vocal cords were paralyzed as her gaze was locked on her perceived ugliness.

Bane opened the door when she didn't reply, and Rose looked away from his scrutinizing gaze after his searching gaze landed on her. His forehead smoothed out when he saw she wasn't further injured. He caught the barest glimpses of her skin's disquieting swelling before she planted her gaze firmly on the floor.

"Are you concerned about your appearance?"

Rose kept her face averted and nodded.

Bane closed the door and approached her with slow footsteps. Rose dropped her head further and kept her eyes tightly closed as Bane came to stand behind her. He leaned close to her and placed one formidable and heavily muscled arm on either side of her, his massive hands settled on the edge of the sink.  


There was only a whisper of space between them that he began to carefully close.

"Do not look away," he ordered in a voice that had her complete attention. Rose slowly lifted her head until she was again looking at her damaged reflection.

Bane held eye contact with her in the mirror as he moved closer until he was pressed flush against her body.

His melodic voice was richly enthralling, and his words slid over her senses like liquid silk. Rose was acutely aware of the warmth radiating from Bane's body as he pressed himself flush against her.

"You are more than desirable Margaret Rose."

Rose dropped her eyes to his hands that gripped the edge of the sink. With a sudden and completely spontaneous decision, Rose shifted around until she was facing Bane's broad chest that was encased in an enticingly tight long-sleeved black shirt. The fabric wrapped across his body and encased him like a second skin.

Bane looked down at Rose with utter shock as she closed her arms around his waist and leaned against him in as big an embrace as she could manage with her average female height.

Rose felt her heart start to race at the heat emanating from Bane's hands as they came to rest on her waist as he returned her embrace.

Bane lifted his hands from her waist and trailed them up the length of her arms. She felt goose bumps sprout upon her skin as he reached the tops of her shoulders.  


He squeezed them lightly and brushed his fingertips along the line of her neck and up to her jaw. Bane moved back a bit and pushed the layers of thermal shirts off one of her shoulders and traced the rough pads of his fingertips along the skin on either side of her bra strap. He let the hand that had been tracing her skin, trail down her body to rest on the curvature of her lower back.

Rose shivered as Bane let his other hand settle briefly on her waist before slipping under the fabric and delicately trace along the soft skin of her belly. Bane watched her face as his large hand carefully skimmed over the smooth flesh of her abdomen.

He felt a surge of lustful encouragement when Rose smoothed her hands across the tight fabric that kissed his skin with the intimacy of a lover.

At her caress, Bane slid her hand up the side of her ribcage, feeling her heartbeat more prominently against his hand as it ascended. He let his hand skim over her breast before letting his palm come to rest against her.

Rose felt a blush fill her face like an oxygen starved back draft as he traced his fingers along the line of the plain cotton bra that covered her supple breast. She let out a sigh when Bane tugged aside the fabric cup of her bra and squeezed her intoxicating flesh lightly.

Bane let his eyes roam over her, focusing on the exposed line of her neck and rapid rise and fall of her chest. He could feel her erratic heartbeat under his palm and rhythmically squeezed her breast when Rose upped the proverbial ante and let one of her hands brush lightly across the front of his zippered gun-metal grey cargo pants.

She let her gaze fall to the hollow at the base of his throat when she could feel his length harden behind the zippered closure. Before Rose dropped her eyes, she caught a fleeting glance of his suffocating gaze that slowly filled his warm hazel eyes with a glowing desire.

Rose felt the sweat that had blossomed on her forehead began to cool and her heartbeat leveled into a steadier beat as he murmured gentle and soothing mechanical whispers. She let her eyes fall close and pressed the side of her face against his chest. She felt a rush of wetness to her femininity as the steady staccato beat of his heart drummed under her ear.  


Rose felt a warm tingle spread through her intimacy at his gentle whispers, comforting yet deliberately unintelligible, melodically incoherent.

Rose pressed her lips above Bane's heart as she felt his hardening cock press firmer against her belly as he pulled her roughly against the front of his body. Her face exploded in a blush as she came to the realization that she was responsible for the physiological wildfire that was coursing through Bane's veins and arteries.

Bane rested his masked face on the crown of Rose's head. He inhaled deeply and over the medicinal scent of the Venom could still capture her delicate albeit diminished scent.  


Rose stiffened and stumbled over her words when Bane slid his hands to the top button of her jeans. She dropped her hands to his wrists and shook her head. She was torn between frantic anxiety brewing in her gut and the delicious feeling at the apex of her thighs. Rose was trying to organize her thoughts but was distracted by the fabric of her panties, which had served to wick away the moisture that his touch had teased from her.

"Please," she managed in a strangled whisper and she let out a relieved sigh when his fingers paused in their movement.

Bane smiled behind his mask and pulled her into his arms, he held her tight until he felt her relax into him. Rose wrapped her arms around him and surrendered herself to his powerful embrace.

"What happens now?" Rose asked. Her voice muffled against his broad chest. Bane rubbed his hand in repetitive oval loops along her back. "Whatever you would like," he answered softly.

They stayed standing together for a couple more minutes before stepping apart. Rose adjusted her clothes back in place and he finished escorting her to the kitchen. Bane found himself fighting an urge to continue talking with her, to prevent her from disappearing behind the kitchen doors. Before he could articulate a benign statement, the fast footfalls of Barsad approached followed by the sound of a throat clearing.

"Boss?" Barsad began after a hesitating pause.

Rose watched as Bane's eyes bled to a cold emptiness as he switched his gaze to Barsad who continued when he had Bane's silent permission.

"Boss, Talia sent me."

Barsad's simple six syllables were more than generous to indicate the importance of the short statement.

Bane reluctantly turned from Rose and walked away with Barsad to a large room on an upper level with a few narrow tables set up with mismatched chairs.

Bane remained standing when Talia swept into the room with commanding footsteps. As she started talking with her cultured tone and inquiring about the status of her systematic destruction of Gotham City. A level lower in the kitchen, Erik immediately started cursing when he initially thought that Bane was responsible for Rose's fresh crop of angry contusions.

Rose hurriedly interrupted his raunchy stream of profanity. "No, it wasn't Bane. It was that woman."

"Talia?" Erik asked.

Rose nodded, "I think that's her name."

"Gefährlicher Cunt," (Dangerous cunt) Erik murmured as he shook his head and went to fetch a bag of frozen green peas for her swollen eye.

Rose hissed at the stark cold plastic kissing her bruised skin and told Erik everything that Talia had done and said. Erik continued to mutter old world curses under his breath as he made Rose a light breakfast of sliced lush berries, bleeding their sweet juices and an almost overripe banana cut into thick rounds. He popped a bagel in the toaster and faced Rose as he waited for the bread to grow crispy around the edges.

She made it through the whole story without crying until she reached the part where Talia had threatened the lives of her family. Her voice broke when he repeated that she would be witness to the brutal slayings.

Rose jumped when the bagel popped up from the toaster and Erik spread the remaining cream cheese across the hot surface.

As Rose ate and continued talking with Erik, in the upper room, Bane and a group of men listened as Talia outlined future tasks and rearranged current assignments.  


Bane found his mind wandering from Talia's words when he glanced down at his chest and his eyes immediately found a stray hair that had escaped Rose's bun and clung to the tight fabric of his shirt. He plucked the ebony strand of hair from his chest as Talia turned her back and pointed out upcoming sites to target.

He clasped his arms behind his back and nodded when Talia turned her attention to him and asked him if he was proceeding with everything he had been saddled. As Bane nodded, the perception was that he was paying attention. It was in fact, quite the contrary.

Behind his back, obscured from human eyes, Bane twisted the strand of Rose's hair around his index finger. His eyes reflected nothing of his true thoughts, he impassively listened to Talia's litany and nodded where appropriate.

Bane's conscious mind was in overdrive, replaying the sensory memories of the recent touch of Rose's skin under his hands as he pulled the solitary strand through his scarred fingers.

Talia finished her general address and asked Bane, Barsad and a couple other random men to stay behind. She handed the pair of anonymous men new orders and a couple legal-sized envelopes. After the two men left, Talia turned her attention to Barsad and also handed him a sealed envelope.

Barsad departed soon after and left Bane and Talia as the room's only occupants.

"How is your progress with the girl?" Talia asked with a devious lilt to her cultured voice.

"It is proceeding as expected," Bane answered with a low melodic but clipped tone.

Talia picked up a folder from the closest table and handed Bane a faxed paper of numerical phone call logs. He glanced over the page as Talia explained its significance.

"We monitor John Daggett's incoming and outgoing phone calls. Every Thursday he dials an escort service and asks for two young, wet and willing girls." Talia paused as Bane looked at the dates and weekly calls to the high-priced sex service. "His words," she said with a flirtatious giggled that withered under his empty stare.

"I'm thinking of sending that mouthy blonde and the girl who is sharing your room."

Bane set his mouth in a firm line behind his mask and lifted his eyes from the page as Talia continued. "Do you harbor feelings for that girl?"

"No," he answered, lying on every cellular level and meeting Talia's eyes before adding. "I feel nothing for her, she is an assignment. But sending her to Daggett will eliminate your assigned objective."

Talia nodded, satisfied that she retained a stranglehold on Bane's feelings. She had never shared her bed with him but always kept him close enough to keep his hope alive. She sadistically became another form of hope to look to but one he could never truly attain. She relished coming back from whatever billionaire she'd let fuck her and let him smell the cock on her breath as she shifted between teasing and ridiculing him.

"You're right," Talia conceded. "That brunette might be a better choice; she looks more worldly."

Talia relayed a few more notable events among the financials of Daggett Industries before she left, leaving the scent of stale sex in the air. Bane watched her depart and curled his hands into fists at his side.

On the lower level kitchen, Rose finished her breakfast and spent the rest of the day prepping starchy root vegetables and cleaning seemingly endless stacks of dirty dishes and cutlery.

When Bane arrived to escort her back to their room, Rose thought it seemed to be a bit earlier than usual. She didn't have his soup finished and startling babbling a rushed apology when his arrival didn't find her ready.

"There is no need to apologize Margaret Rose. Please, do finish. I shall wait."

Rose nodded and returned to stirring the one-quart saucepan as Bane sat in one of the folding chairs with a low groan at his protesting lower back. Rose heard his low grunt of discomfort sound over her shoulder as she stirred in some steamed cauliflower.

Erik had went for an extended smoke break to take a call from his niece. Rose had the television volume turned low to the low budget romantic movie of the week.

Bane's eyes briefly took in the program before sliding over to Rose's busily cooking form. He observed her drop a glistening square of butter into the soup and stir until it disappeared into the creamy stock.

Rose felt his gaze when it landed on her and her mind immediately conjured up visual remembrances in a live action show behind her eyes as she ladled his soup into a deep ceramic bowl.

She turned with their dinner tray, "I'm all done."

Bane nodded and stood with the slightest of visible effort, he surprised her by taking the tray from her hands before they walked back to their chilly subterranean room.

As Rose settled at her usual dining spot and Bane behind his desk, down the hall, Caroline and Jayne were just returning to their own cramped room.

Jayne's stomach growled as the girls waited for their dinner to arrive. Caroline and Jayne were both rendered speechless when the sophisticated woman with bountiful soft waves of silken hair, embodying subtle grace and refinement walked in with their dinner plates.

"You may eat," Talia said as the girls stared at her with wide, unblinking eyes.

Jayne started eating first and Caroline shortly thereafter before Talia began addressing them.

"Would you girl's like an existence beyond scrubbing toilets, perhaps a better place to sleep?" Talia started. Caroline couldn't nod fast enough.

Talia smiled at Caroline's instant and lively enthusiasm before continuing in her couth tone.

"Have either of you heard of John Daggett or Daggett Industries?"

Jayne swallowed a mouthful of mashed potatoes and meatloaf before answering. "He's a client of my mom's."

Talia looked at Jayne until she nervously expounded. "My mom's a tax attorney."

Talia nodded thoughtfully and continued. "John Daggett is social swine; he would be more suited at home doing backstrokes in the shallow end of the gene pool or performing self-  
felatio in the veritable den of debauchery. He is a sexual deviant and has a weekly visit from a pair of girls at a high-priced escort service."

Talia had the complete and unequivocal attention of both girls as she continued to speak.

"In two days, Daggett is due a visit by two girls. If those two girls happen to be both of you and you follow my orders without the slightest of deviation, you will return to much improved living quarters and work assignment."

Caroline cleared her throat, "do we have to have sex with him?"

Talia shook her head and reached into the pocket of her designer camel-colored pea coat.

"No," she said as she held up a small plastic vial filled with a clear liquid. "When you arrive at Daggett's penthouse, slip the contents of this into his drink. Upon consumption, he will be unconscious within minutes. Entertain him until then. Strip him of his clothes and leave several empty condom packets on the floor. When he awakes, he will feel satisfied even though he'll remember nothing of the evening."

Jayne had gone back to mopping up a rich, brown gravy with her crust of French bread as Talia continued.

"After Daggett is unconscious, you will access each computer and copy the files and folders as well as gather any other information that I may deem necessary. You will be escorted to this location as well as have a tracking bracelet. If you attempt to escape or make a call to any authority or legal entity. You and your entire family will be slaughtered, no one overlooked."

Caroline swallowed hard as she thought of her seven-year-old brother.

"We won't be hurt?" Jayne asked as she wiped her mouth with the rough fibered square napkin.

"You will not be hurt; provided you follow my orders to the precise letter."

As Caroline and Jayne both nodded in agreement to Talia's proposal, down the hall, Bane finished eating and affixed his mask back into place. He looked over at Rose as she speared a broccoli floret that was dressed with toasted sesame oil.

Bane shuffled some random papers until she pushed her plate aside before he spoke. "Would you like to go on an errand with me?" he asked, knowing it had been a decent stretch of time since she had been outside.

"Yes, please," Rose answered loudly and flushed with embarrassment at her ecstatic response.

A small smile appeared on Bane's lips and he instructed Rose to put on a hat and pull up her hood to obscure her identity. Bane nodded in satisfaction after she had slipped on a thick jacket that made her seem genderless.

Bane led Rose through a series of hallways and down a metal flight of stairs before arriving at the makeshift parking lot. He opened the passenger side door of a battered Jeep for Rose before he sat down behind the wheel.

Rose sat on the lumpy passenger seat as Bane steered the vehicle through the darkened streets of Gotham. A smile found its way to her lips as she recalled their trip the coast and the comforting latte and sweet, flaky pastry.

As Bane drove, he kept shooting sidelong glances over at Rose. He watched the evolution of her facial expressions as her thoughts rapidly changed with each passing mile. Inside her head, Rose was stuck in an emotional and erratic game of tug-of-war. Thoughts flashed with lightning fast speed across the floor of her conscious mind.

"I think I really want to be spending time with him. Is that wrong?" she thought as Bane made a right turn and headed to the heart of downtown Gotham.

"I'm concerned about what seems to be his constant pain. Should I?" Rose thought and a deep frown creased her forehead.

Bane looked over at the very moment she bit her lip when a startling realization swam to the surface. "I think I might want him to touch me." she thought as she looked over and caught Bane's eyes.

Rose pressed her lips into a thin line and had a delicious thought that made her want to squeeze her thighs together. "And I think I want to touch him."


	11. Funhouse Mirrors

Bane drove the Jeep down a stretch of tired looking asphalt, pitted by the elements. Rose was jostled in her seat when he steered through a rough patch of overgrown and dried agapanthus. 

Rose found her vocal cords had succumbed to total paralysis every time she alighted on something to say. 

Bane smiled behind his mask whenever he’d glance over at her from the corner of his eye. She would part her lips slightly and take the smallest of inhales, however, before a sound would emit, she’d press her lips tightly together and look out the dirty window or stare down at her lap. He had decided to not force her to engage in conversation and instead was amused by her hesitation. 

Rose’s mind was loud and nearly made her wince when her confused myriad of thoughts fought for dominance. She was having a hard time sorting the individual thoughts apart.

“Ask where you’re going? That’s casual enough,” she thought and nearly nodded, but no words would sound from between her chapped lips. 

“Music; ask him what music he likes. Or maybe, ask him to turn on the radio?” Rose thought but bit her lip before speaking. 

“I could ask him if he feels okay,” she thought but rapidly brushed that away. Rose had heard him groan several times when he would rise from a seated position. “That’s too personal,” she thought and stared down at her folded hands in her lap. She frowned as her thoughts started to form into a solid unintelligible ball. 

Rose glanced up from her lap and her eyes grew large as words tumbled from her lips without a hesitating thought. 

“It’s Magic Land,” she said much louder than intended and leaned forward as much as the seatbelt allowed. “It was shut down when I was ten,” Rose added when she realized the volume of her outburst and childish excitement. 

Bane nearly chuckled audibly when her enthusiasm filled the silence. “It is now owned by the state but has become home to several transient populations,” he said before adding. 

“As well as a convenient spot for business.” 

“Business?” she asked as Bane steered the Jeep closer to the cracked and desolated parking lot of the once thriving and financially lucrative amusement park. 

“Yes,” he said without inflection and cut the engine after he put the vehicle in park. Rose watched him slip the keys in the pocket of his charcoal grey cargo pants as he climbed out of the Jeep. 

Bane walked around to the other side of the vehicle. He pulled open Rose’s door and extended one of his partially gloved hands towards her. “Will you accompany me Margaret Rose?” he asked in a low musical whisper that made a low tingle start at the base of her back and climb to the base of her neck. 

Rose unbuckled her seatbelt and grasped his offered hand. Bane found her tentative hesitation to be intoxicating and he struggled to not pull her from the Jeep’s interior and crush her body to his chest. He fought the urge to run his hands over her warm skin, his fingertips itched to memorize the peaks and valleys of her body. 

As Rose stepped out of the vehicle, Bane let his eyes liberally run over her. He had a surge of irritation at the layers of thermal clothing that made her seem shapeless. He could see just the barest kiss of her form under her long-sleeved shirts and thick coat. 

Rose caught his searching gaze and a bright blush appeared high on her cheekbones. As he watched, her moist, pink tongue darted out and nervously moistened her lips.  
Neither of them released their grip on each other’s hand, even as he slammed the door and ensured it was locked. 

Bane’s massive hand seemed to swallow each digit on Rose’s small hand, his grip was engulfing and all-consuming as she walked next to him towards the broken-down metal turn stiles of the cadaverous amusement park.

Bane led Rose through the broken down remains of the amusement park, detritus from discarded cardboard popcorn containers and candy wrappers littered the ground. 

As Rose’s gaze tried to be everywhere at once, Bane’s thoughts were elsewhere when Talia’s face popped up in the front of his mind. 

Talia had told him months ago that he would be meeting with a group of South African guerilla soldiers at the theme park that boasted the skeletal remains of large Ferris wheels. 

Silent horses stood stoic and rotting on the Merry-go-Round as the bumper cars had become homes to various rodent populations. 

The once colorful ride that cost six rectangular tickets to ride was now peeled and faded under the harsh rays of the sun with no daily inspections and maintenance. 

Rose whipped her head to the left at the vacant haunted house that promised, “thrills…chills….and no guarantee of a return to the land of the living.”

Bane squeezed Rose’s hand tighter and it drew her attention from an empty black park bench that a fat pigeon was using to rest its grey feathered wings. A sharp cry from the native Grackle bird caught Rose’s ears, she searched the leaf barren trees for the dark blackbird look-a-like that boasted a purple metallic chest. 

Bane had unconsciously gripped her hand harder when he thought back to the last time he had left Rose unattended. He clenched his jaw as his gaze shifted to Rose and the brilliant bruises that marred her otherwise smooth and unlined skin. The explosion of color around her eyes could have been an homage to a variety of works by Miro.

They walked in silence for a bit, Rose was content to try and look everywhere at once. She brought her eyes to Bane when he paused in front of the large and once colorful “Captain Howdy’s Funhouse,” complete with a mirrored maze and the now deflated air floor of the “anti-gravity room.”

Bane kept his grip on Rose’s hand firm as he addressed her. She was distracted by the heat from his hand and the rough pad of his thumb that traced small circles on the soft webbing of skin between her thumb and forefinger. 

“I will be around the corner and out of sight for no more than eight minutes. You will need to wait inside there until I return, for your own safety.”

Rose turned and looked over her shoulder at the sagging funhouse and then back to Bane. 

She nodded in agreement as he added in a low tone that carried the mighty weight of premeditated malice when it sounded mechanically and musically through his mask. 

“I would suggest you not attempt any sort of escape, Margaret Rose. It would cause me deep regret to hobble you.” 

Rose feigned a cough to cover her raging nerves and surge of fear. “I promise, I won’t go anywhere.”

Bane nodded and reluctantly released her hand. He watched her climb the drooping steps of the funhouse that were overrun with dandelions and long blades of bright green grass. 

Bane walked away when Rose disappeared from his view and made his way to the “Adventure” themed part of the amusement park. He met with a trio of guerilla soldiers he had encountered in South Africa on previous missions. 

The tallest of the men nodded in greeting and Bane parroted with a dip of his own chin. As he had earlier stated to Rose, the meeting was brief and very few words were exchanged. 

The deadly trio from South Africa had a steel grey leather briefcase that had seen better days. The lock was intact as the man stated, “3-6-8,” and moved the small numerical dials into the correct combination. 

Bane nodded as his eyes fell upon the contents.

Bane pulled a few stacks of crisp and banded bills from his inner jacket pocket and passed them to one of the other men who had stayed silent the entire time. As the men shook hands and parted ways, Rose explored “Captain’s Howdy’s Funhouse.” She avoided a puddle of stagnant water that was pregnant with squiggling mosquito larvae.  


Rose giggled aloud as she crossed the balance beam and then went through the hopscotch style obstacle course before arriving to the entrance of the ceiling to floor mirrored maze. 

Rose’s smile froze and quickly succumbed to death as she caught her reflection in a pane of cracked mirror. Her right eye looked more swollen than it felt and was a brilliant sunrise of colors across the puffy eyelid and up to her eyebrow. 

Rose turned away from her reflection and cursed under her breath at the stupidity of choosing to enter a den of inescapable reflections of naked truth. 

A fat tear formed in her left eye and slowly ran down her cheek. Thanks to time and the exposure to the elements, most of the mirrors were cracked or desiccated by dark tarnish. 

Rose walked out of the “House of Mirrors,” and over to a small spot that used to be designated as a photo spot with a now dull and weathered wooden deck that sat on a now unattended pond. 

The small body of water was filled with thick bunches of Cattails with their pungent aroma and a thick layer of green slime along the sides of decorative boulders. Rose stared out at the chilly water and wiped away her tears. She sniffed loudly as she wiped her nose on her sleeve. 

Rose leaned her elbows down on the deck’s ledge and closed her eyes. She was lost in thought when Bane returned to the funhouse. He stooped to walk into the funhouse entrance and his eyes searched with somewhat of a frenzy to find her. 

Bane felt a significant measure of relief when he found her looking out onto the brackish water. His eyes traced over her body as she stood on the creaky deck. He was relieved to find that she hadn’t tried to stray as he tightened his grip on the worn handle of the briefcase. 

He took a few steps toward her and the new noise startled her back to alertness. 

Rose turned towards him and immediately noticed the addition of the briefcase. Her mind immediately started thinking to all of her favorite movies that featured ominous leather vessels filled with nearly anything imaginable.

“Are there drugs in there?” she thought and flicked her eyes up to meet his. 

“Diamonds?”

“Cash, fat stacks of money?”

Bane watched as her eyes widened a bit at his new cargo. 

“Enjoying the view?” he asked and watched her struggle with a response. Rose finally shrugged and leaned back against the wooden rail as she crossed her arms defensively. “It’s okay, the last time I stood here I was eight,” she said with a faraway smile as she remembered the large amount of sticky cotton candy that she had eaten that day. 

Bane enjoyed the smile that pulled at her lips and within seconds everything changed.

Her smile disappeared as the wood that was filled with dry rot, finally broke under her weight. Bane watched with complete and utter helplessness, a feeling he was not familiar with, as he heard her shrill cry as she landed in the stagnant water that was once clear and sparkling and held the strong odor of chlorine. 

Bane rushed forward onto the deck that groaned under his weight as her cries were choked with a mouthful of water adorned with nature’s detritus. 

Rose was treading water and Bane easily grasped her under her arms and lifted her from the icy bath. Rose was already trying to suppress her shivering when he set her on her close to unsteady feet.

Her multiple thermal and cotton layers were soaked through from the bitterly cold water. 

Bane instantly saw the instability of her gait as well as the bluish tinge that had begun on her lips and nail beds. He scooped her up in his powerful arms after juggling the leather case. 

Rose tried to curl her body onto itself as her teeth chattered loudly as much as she tried to clamp her jaw shut. Bane quickly returned with Rose to the Jeep and cranked the heater to its maximum heat setting after he started the engine. 

Rose made a feeble attempt to push his hands away when he started pulling off her layers of wet clothing.

“You need to warm up now Margaret Rose,” Bane said as he pulled a rough, wool candy apple red emergency blanket from behind the passenger seat.

Rose gasped at the sudden awareness of his warm hands on her bare skin and her shivering intensified when Bane moved back from her and pulled off his vest and long-sleeved grey thermal shirt. 

“What...are...you …doing?” Rose asked through her chattering teeth.

“Margaret Rose, we need to raise your body temperature immediately ,” Bane said and added in a musical whisper as he started pulling at her thin tank top. “Please.”

Rose nodded deliberately between shudders and smiled gratefully when Bane pulled the scratchy blanket around her body. 

Rose was covered as much as she could be as Bane wordlessly reached behind her and unclasped her soaking wet bra. Rose managed a faint blush despite being so cold.

Bane pulled Rose against his body and wrapped his arms around her, he was alarmed at how icy skin felt. Bane pressed their bare skin together in an effort to instill some warmth into her. 

“I will not hurt you,” Bane whispered softly in a mechanical melody that distracted her from the thought of being so cold for a few moments. 

Rose let herself relax against him. Bane tightened his grip on her as he tried to not focus on how smooth and soft her skin was or the fact that he could feel her breasts pressing against his chest. 

Rose’s breathing slowly returned to a more normal rhythm as Bane moved his hands across the naked skin of her back, trying to urge warmth back to her cool skin. 

As his hands moved across her bare skin, Rose found herself moving closer to Bane, as his hands dipped lower with each downward pass. 

Silence filled the space between them as Rose lifted a pale hand to his chest and settled it over his heart, she could feel the steady drumbeat under her palm. 

Bane’s hands froze against the back of her thighs when Rose traced her chilly fingertips along the skin of his chest which was taut over his heavy layers of muscle. She flattened her hand over his heart and felt the flesh of his nipple harden under her palm. 

Rose wordlessly arched her back and pressed the front of her body against him. A low moan passed through her lips when Bane’s hand snaked around to the inside of her thigh and tickled the soft, supple skin of her inner thigh. 

Bane’s cock sprang to life at the sound of her velvety gasps as he brushed a couple fingers across the fabric that covered the soft and delicate skin of her femininity. She struggled to catch her breath when he hooked a finger on the fabric of her panties and pulled it away from her body, exposing her most intimate parts to his piercing gaze. 

Before Rose could fully process the sensations flooding her lower body, his fingertips were exploring her moist folds. The corner of Bane’s lips lifted in a dangerous smile under his mask when Rose tentatively rocked her pelvis into his hand. 

He responded by rubbing a calloused fingertip in small circles against her swelling clit. Rose’s body alighted as her nerves started a wildfire that made her rock her pelvis against him as she felt a warm ball of pleasure start to grow in her lower body.

Bane shifted on the front seat and moved them both until Rose was lying on her back, the rough fibers of the blankets scratched between her shoulder blades. His cock strained against the zippered closure of his pants as a wave of pleasure coiled itself tightly in her belly and then exploded throughout her limbs.

Bane closed his eyes as he slowly slid a finger into her wet opening. Rose gasped as he shallowly touched her and continued to climax under him. Her body was warm and wet under his touch as Bane reveled in the knowledge that she was gasping and undulating only for him.

Bane pulled the red blanket around her and let her catch her breath as he fought the erratic urge to bury his cock inside of her. 

Rose glanced down and could see the bulge of his engorged cock pressing against his pants, she held her breath as she fumbled with the zipper that kept his body out of sight. 

“Not here,” Bane growled and caught her slim wrists, stopping their movement at his pants. He let his heavy gaze travel over her exposed body before he helped her straighten up in the passenger seat. His melodic whisper caused a healthy crop of goose bumps to sprout along her arms as he adjusted the heater vents to blow their hot exhalations onto her. 

Bane settled behind the steering wheel and flipped on the radio station. As he was moving through the channels, Rose unbuckled her seatbelt, and while keeping the blanket tucked around her, moved across the front seat and slid her arms around Bane’s neck and shoulders. 

His hands automatically went to her body and the enticing expanses of bare skin that had regained a rosy glow from the stifling heat in the vehicle. 

“What are you doing Margaret Rose?” he asked in a strangled musical whisper when she slid a hand down to move along the zipper of his pants. 

He exhilarated in the feeling of her hot exhale on his neck as she spoke breathlessly. 

“I’m thanking you,” she said as she had to break eye contact to finally end up unbuckling his vest contraption. Rose was unzipping his cargo pants when Bane again caught her wrists. “You don’t have to thank me,” he said and added with a chuckle. “I should be thanking you for allowing me to touch you.”

Rose looked up at him as a hot blush filled her face. “I wasn’t thanking you for that, I know that Caroline and Jayne have things a little different.”

Bane allowed her to move her wrist out of his grip. “Thank you for letting me stay safe in the kitchen,” she whispered and pressed her lips to the front of his cool, metallic mask.

Rose surprised him almost as much as herself when she freed his cock from behind his zipper. She tentatively moved her hand along his rigid flesh until his increase in breath  
silently encouraged her, soon she was liberally stroking him close to an aching need for a release.

Bane closed his eyes and spilled his seed into Rose’s palm in a few hot spurts. 

He opened his eyes as Rose wiped her hand against the floor mat. Before he knew it, in a decision born completely in lustful spontaneity, Bane quickly raised his hands to his mask  
and unfastened the straps and clasps. 

Rose was at a loss for words as she watched him remove his mask, she automatically turned her head and averted her gaze. 

“No,” Bane ordered in a mechanical demand that made a rush of wetness flood to her center. “Look at me,” he continued and pulled her body close.

Rose’s eyes slowly lifted to his face and the thick scars that lined his cheekbones and lower jaw. His lips were crisscrossed with uneven pale lines that had healed in jagged ridges. His nose had been poorly set and boasted a protruding bump from the broken cartilage. 

Rose’s eyes were still memorizing his face when Bane pulled her close, the blanket slipped from her body and left her nearly naked in his arms. 

Rose’s gasp was swallowed by the crush of Bane’s lips against hers. She arched into his touch when his hand found and rhythmically squeezed her breast. A protest came to her lips when his hand fell away from her flesh. 

Her features became etched with concern when pain creased Bane’s forehead into a deep frown and he hurriedly slipped his mask back into place. He took a deep breath and kept the narcotic laced oxygen trapped in his lungs before exhaling slowly. His frown smoothed away, and his pupils dilated as the rush of the drug saturated his nervous system.  
“Would you like to return to our home Margaret Rose?” Bane asked as his eyes raked lavisciously over her body. 

She nodded and settled back into the passenger seat, pulling the blanket around her shoulders as Bane drove the car back to their underground residence.


	12. Last Dance

As Bane steered the Jeep away from the amusement park and returned to the bumpy road which led to the smooth freeway, Rose slipped back into the driest of her clothing.

Back in their repetitive underground lives, Caroline was scrutinizing one of her overgrown cuticles as Jayne scrubbed the hard floor with a harsh cleanser. The amber liquid held the artificial, sweet stench of lemons that glistened on the slate floor under Jayne's leaky gloved hands.

"What do you think about that woman's offer?" Caroline asked as she winced and bit at her ragged fingernail.

Caroline didn't bother to let Jayne even begin to answer as she rattled off her own personal thoughts on the whole matter. She lectured them as Jayne continued scrubbing the grey floor. Jayne was more than content to let Caroline take the center stage.

Again.

Jayne let a small secretive smile tease at her lips, and she dropped her gaze to the corners as Caroline continued to prattle. Jayne's mind was a billion light years away.

Jayne had eyes for a beautiful man with deep ebony skin. Through minuscule moments and scant conversation, she had learned his name was Israel and that he was twenty-three years old. She resembled a blushing bride every time he fell into her line of sight.

Israel towered over her by more than a foot but was making it more and more convenient to find her at least once a day. Often, he settled for a shared glance and a smile. Every once and awhile though, he was rewarded with a brushing of their hands in the concrete hallways or the barest of kisses between their bodies as they passed on the metal stairs.  


Bane and Rose returned as Caroline continued to bitch about the daily routine as Jayne stripped off her gloves and nodded where appropriate.

A chuckle made its way from between Bane's scarred lips as he caught a whiff of Rose on a downwind. She turned at the sound of his musical amusement.

"What?"

Bane caught her upper arm as she prepared to turn to the right to return to their shared room.

"What's this way?" Rose asked with growing interest, coupled with the slightest bit of anxiety.

"The showers," Bane answered with a melodic lilt.

Rose's gaze tried to be everywhere at once as Bane led her through foreign hallways and down a small flight of stairs. She tried to be nonchalant as she dipped her head to catch the foul odor of the stagnant water that had saturated her clothing.

The narrow shower boasted a hard water stained floor and an oxidized faucet. Rose remained distracted by the new surroundings as Bane procured a cotton bath towel with frayed edges and a small plastic bottle that held an opaque liquid soap.

"This should be sufficient," Bane said as he handed her the haphazardly folded towel and soap.

"Thank you," Rose started to say in a whisper which died in a strangled gasp when his hands skimmed down her sides and dropped to the bottom of her damp thermal shirt. She couldn't seem to move as he tugged the shirt up and over her head.

Bane's own breathing slowed as he traced his fingertips against the delicate skin of her lower belly, she shivered when his hands dipped lower and began to unzip her pants.

Rose felt her thighs close to shaking when he latched his fingertips on the waistband of her pants and tugged them down her hips. Bane's eyes never left her face as he cupped his hand against the front of her plain grey panties.

The Venom that coursed through his body heightened his senses and his enhanced hearing caught the beginning hitches in her breath under his light touch. Under his metallic cage of a mask, Bane smiled as her body reacted to his caress.

He slid a hand down the front of the smooth fabric of her panties, to rest flush against her tender flesh. Rose issued a low moan as he began to explore her delicate folds.  


Rose blushed as a rush of wetness flooded to her femininity, Bane gave an appreciative feral growl and lifted her off her feet and pushed her against the damp, grey wall. Her breath came faster as he increased his circular massage against the swelling knot of flesh under his fingertips.

Rose tightened her grip on his massive and heavily muscled shoulders as she felt a growing heaviness developing in her lower body. She bit the inside of her mouth and slid one of her hands down to brush against the front of his cargo pants.

A startled gasp escaped Rose's lips as she felt his hardening cock behind the zippered closure. As Bane brought her closer to the precipice of ecstasy, Rose, emboldened by her growing pleasure fumbled at his zipper and creased leather belt.

Rose closed her eyes tightly as her orgasm crashed over her, she sagged in his powerful arms as her body succumbed to paralyzing bliss. For a few moments, the small, dank room was quiet, save for the ragged sounds of their combined increased breathing.

Bane slid his hands to rest low on her waist and he continued to hold her in place as he shifted until he was standing between her quivering legs. Rose was left with her thighs on either side of his hips.

Bane took a sharp breath and slid his hands up her waist to settle over her breasts, Rose echoed his inhalation as his rough padded fingertips massaged the supple flesh. The dark pink skin of her nipples hardened under his palm and he pressed his hips closer until she could feel his rigid cock through the fabric of his pants.

Rose arched her back and pressed her breasts harder into his palms. Bane suppressed a vulnerable moan by dropping his hands to cup under her butt and carried her further into the shower stall.

Rose gasped as the cold-water bit into her skin when Bane cranked the faucet and set her down on her close to unsteady feet.

Rose smiled gratefully as the water slowly began to warm and wash over her grimy skin. As the water sluiced through her black hair, the strands took on the delicious glossy tone of a raven's pinfeathers.

Bane watched the fat drops of water trail down her bare skin, his eyes tracked a particularly healthy bloated globule of water disappear into the apex at the top of her thighs.

Rose wordlessly took the plastic bottle of liquid soap from Bane and squeezed a small amount of the lightly scented gel into her palm. As Rose rubbed her hands together and produced a soapy, opalescent bubbly lather, Bane began to remove the rest of his clothing. Each item in deliberate slowness and self-control, his purposeful movement afforded him time to sort his thoughts.

His mind, he found with a great deal of perplexity, was uncharacteristically chaotic and he found himself questioning where his loyalty truly existed.

"This girl doesn't want anything from you." he thought as his eyes followed Rose's hands as she scrubbed her elbows and continued the sudsy foam further up her arms.

Bane frowned as he unlaced and kicked off his heavy, steel-toed boots. His thoughts turned grey and murky when he thought of Talia spending time with the suave and sophisticated billionaire Bruce Wayne. Bane clenched his teeth until his jaw popped as he recalled a recent interaction with Talia when she had stunk of stale lovemaking and a champagne breakfast. Talia had brushed her fingertips along the exposed skin under his right eye and murmured, "my friend," before she outlined his next role in Gotham's systematic destruction.

"My friend…" Bane thought with a deepening frown as his mind replayed images of Talia dressing up for a night on the town as Miranda Tate.

"My friend," his conscious mind whispered as his eyes followed Rose's movement as she vigorously scrubbed her neck and upper chest.

"My friend," he thought with a grimace as he watched Rose gently let the warm water spray against the damaged skin of her face. "That's because of Talia," his mind taunted when 

Rose winced at the stinging points of water land and flow over her bruised eye.

Rose paused in rinsing off the soap bubbles when she felt the formidable weight of Bane's gaze. She wiped a hand across her eyes as she felt her mouth dry up and her words evaporate before they could form as her gaze raked across his near nude body.

Her hand opened and the threadbare washrag fell to the wet floor as Bane unzipped his pants and let them slide from his body. They landed in whispered silence and Rose felt her eyes grow wide as she trailed her gaze upwards along the scarred skin of his calves and thickly muscled thighs.

Rose felt her chest grow tight as her eyes took in the broad expanse of his chest and shoulders and trailed along the solid ridges of his abdominal muscle wall.

A small smile played at Bane's lips and his breath came faster through his coiled, metallic mask, his cock hung heavily between his thighs and stiffened with each step he advanced towards Rose.

Bane grasped Rose's naked, wet waist and slid his hands to cup under the backs of her thighs. He lifted her as he pressed his lower body against hers. Rose responded by opening her legs further and squeezing her thighs on either side of his waist.

Bane slipped a hand to cover her wet femininity and shallowly slipped a finger into her with a deep moan. He gently massaged her clit as he held her firmly as she pressed her lips to his chest.

"This will make you mine," Bane whispered in his haunting mechanical voice as he positioned himself at her opening.

He shifted her weight and with a well-practiced manner, quickly unfastened his mask and slipped it free of his face.

Rose held his gaze and slowly nodded before allowing him to ease his length into her.

"Give me your pain," Bane whispered as he held her gaze and carefully moved in and out of her. His lips pressed to hers before she could think about replying. Rose shouted the jolt that reverberated through her as he slid his rigid length in and out of her.

Rose broke away from his gaze and looked down to where he plunged into her body, she felt a little shock every time their bodies intimately kissed.

Rose's eyes rapidly returned to Bane's when his hand slipped between their bodies and rubbed lazy circles around her swollen clit.

"Say it Margaret Rose," Bane ordered as his lips hovered over hers. She flicked her tongue against the most scarred flesh of his lower lip and answered as his cock twitched from deep inside her, in a whisper that held no trace of hesitation.

"I'm yours."

As the spray of water washed away any proof of innocence, Bane's need for his narcotic inhalant took over and he fumbled at his mask as his hands began to shake.

He froze when he felt Rose's hands land on top of his, she pulled at his large wrists and he allowed her to lift his hands away.

Bane squeezed his large hands under the smooth flesh of her thighs as Rose refastened every strap and buckle that allowed the analgesic to fill his lungs. His eyes dilated as the Venom stomped the majority of his pain into a temporary oblivion.

As she spoke, she traced her finger over the scar that ran across his strong carotid artery. "I'm yours, as long as you'll keep me safe."

"No one will hurt you," Bane vowed in a thick voice as she arched her back into him. He pushed into her as far as he could when he felt her intimate walls tighten and squeeze around his cock.

They shared a moment of gentle ecstasy before returning to their room in fresh clothes, Rose had piled her damp hair into a sloppy bun.

The next couple days passed with their usual state of existence for all, before the morning however, in which Israel delivered a few large, paper shopping bags to Caroline and Jayne's cell.

Jayne had been stuffing a wedge of French bread, slathered with marinara, into her mouth when Israel walked into the room. She quickly wiped her mouth and took a long sip of her bitter tea and unconsciously tucked her hair back behind her ear.

Israel smiled long and hard at Jayne before depositing the bags on the chilly floor. "These are from Talia. She said to be ready in two hours."

Jayne found herself unable to say anything intelligible and just smiled, even after Israel departed.

Caroline, who noticed nothing but herself, quickly pounced on the department store bags. She began pulling out lacy panties, sheer thigh-high stockings, pricey stiletto heels and wispy gowns that would hug each and every curve in its silky embrace.

Jayne wiped her mouth again with the scratchy square paper napkin before wadding it into a ball, she then proceeded in checking the contents of the shopping bags. She wiped breadcrumbs off the front of her shirt before she held up a thin slip of a dress, composed of a whisper of fabric.  


Caroline slipped out of her nondescript thermal layers and pulled an identical dress from a bag. The nearly sheer fabric hugged every curve of her body, the dress was a deep emerald green and made her eyes seem to glow from within.

"You should totally wear that one," Caroline gushed to Jayne who was holding the sister dress against her body. As Jayne looked down at the blood red dress, Caroline piled her hair up onto her head and held it in place as she swiveled her hips in the fabric that kissed her supple flesh like a second skin.

Precisely two hours later, Israel returned to find both girls standing in shiny black spiked stilettos. His eyes widened visibly when his gaze landed on Jayne's form that was encased in the barely there gauzy cloth. The brilliant red of the fabric stretched taut across and deep between her breasts.

Israel led the girls down the dim corridors, Caroline had the lead and swung her hips under the dull glow of the single overhead bulbs. He slowed his pace until he was walking even with Jayne, she was left a little uncomfortable with the height of her shoes.

"You look different," Israel whispered low enough that Caroline couldn't overhear. Jayne covered a giggle, "thanks," she murmured.

He brushed a few stray strands of hair off her shoulder before placing a quick kiss on her neck.

A blush sprang to life across Jayne's features and she was feeling flustered when the hall ended at a small flight of steel stairs. At the bottom of the stairs waited a dark blue SUV, a few anonymous men, the familiar Barsad and the stoic Talia.

Both girls stood straight as Talia gave them a thorough once over and nodded her approval at their risqué attire. They watched her snap her fingers and Barsad brought over a small grey suitcase.

Talia pulled two thin metal bracelets that were studded with gaudy gemstones. She handed one to each of the girls. "These will tell me where you are at all times. Put them on now and remove them only at my discretion."

Jayne stiffened and adjusted her bracelet nervously as Talia walked them to the massive blue vehicle to see them off.

Talia gave Caroline a gentle smile as she traced a rounded lacquered tip fingernail along her jaw line. "If you attempt to deviate from what I have outlined, I'll peel away your beauty and throw you to the ravenous dogs."

Caroline's face bled to a sallow fish belly white as Talia's smile remained fixed in place as she added. "Do you both understand?"

Jayne and Caroline frantically bobbed their heads and carefully climbed into the SUV on their five-inch heels.

The grizzled driver was pressing the accelerator as soon as Caroline pulled the door closed. Sitting shotgun was a young man with the faint covering of peach fuzz along his cheeks and chin. Barsad sat on a bench seat behind the girls as the vehicle bounced over a speed bump.

As soon as Jayne clicked her seatbelt and adjusted the shoulder strap, Barsad dropped a thick manila envelope over the seat.  
"Instructions," he said in an unreadable tone.

Jayne opened the envelope and pulled the contents to her glitzy lap. Caroline picked up a small plastic bag that held two small white tablets.

Jayne unfolded a lined sheet of paper and summarized the note to Caroline who was still occupied with the pills.

"It says when we get there, he'll be alone with two guards posted outside. We get him to relax and put those in his drink. Apparently, he likes scotch and he'll be unconscious within fifteen minutes of taking those," Jayne said as she looked up from the handwritten note.

"It says to then get him on a bed or sofa, strip him and leave a few condom wrappers so he'll think he got his money worth. Then," Jayne said as she rooted around the pile of stuff in her lap. "We are supposed to copy a list of files written here," she added as she held up an oval flash drive.

Barsad's voice caught the girls by surprise, and more so when he passed a small cell phone over the seat. Caroline took the phone and turned it over in her jewelry bedecked hand. 

"As soon as you have secured Daggett and procured all the files, you will call me and exit the room without drawing any unnecessary attention to yourselves."

Caroline slipped the phone into her beaded clutch and poured over the instructions again with Jayne on the ride to Daggett's penthouse. As the dark SUV pulled to a stop in front of Daggett's building, back in the subterranean kitchen, Rose was chopping up a pile of root vegetables into a stainless-steel pot.

She had a lazy smile playing about her lips as she ran her knife through sweet bright orange vegetables. Erik had taken another smoke break and left Rose with the television as company.

She had the volume cranked to the max to hear over the frying pan and other sounds her cooking had produced. Bane was able to use her diminished hearing to his advantage as he slipped in the kitchen doors, he watched her a few moments before walking up and standing behind her.

Rose froze and gave a sharp inhale that was rich with a flood of delicious anticipation when she felt Bane's hands land on her hips.

He embraced her wordlessly, pulling her body back to rest flush against him. Rose closed her eyes as she let herself relax into his strong arms.

"Are you feeling well?" he asked as he pressed the front of his mask to the top of her head.

He breathed deep and inhaled the delicate scent that clung to her hair and skin.

Rose nodded and murmured a yes, she opened her eyes when Bane lifted one of his hands from her body. She felt him shift behind her and then his hand was in front of her. Rose squinted her eyes at the small peach colored pill in the palm of his hand, "what's that?"

Bane cleared his throat before answering in a musical tone that gave no clue to what he was thinking. "It's emergency contraception."

Rose felt a blush bloom and she plucked the pill from his palm, she dry swallowed the small pill that began to disintegrate upon contact with her saliva. She washed down the acrid bitterness with a few sips of her heavily sweetened black tea.

As Rose finished her glass of tea, across Gotham, Jayne and Caroline rode the elevator to the top floor. Jayne tugged the short dress down her thighs as the reflective doors opened and they were met with a lustrous grey marble floor.

Two broad-shouldered and well-dressed men flanked the doorway to John Daggett's penthouse suite. Their tailored suits concealed their Smith & Wesson .357 revolvers.

Caroline smeared a thick layer of gloss over her already shiny lips before Jayne delivered three tentative knocks on Daggett's penthouse door.

Jayne shuddered when the doors swung open and John Daggett's slimy gaze washed over her and Caroline. She tried to not wrinkle her nose when a low appreciative murmur spilled from Daggett's lips as his eyes trailed over the tops of the girl's exposed breasts that were pushed upward from the tight fabric of their dresses.

"Well, you two fit the bill, a little skinny though," Daggett added as he leered.

His tongue darted out and moistened his lips.

The reptilian Daggett stepped aside and let the girls enter the penthouse.

Caroline squared his shoulders and arched her back so her breasts were more prominent, and her waist seemed slimmer. Daggett's eyes followed the gentle swing that Caroline put into her stride as she swayed into the spacious penthouse.

Jayne brought up the rear and took a seat on the corner of a plush blue sofa.

"You girl's from the area?" Daggett asked lavisciously as he circled Caroline like a great white shark stalking a lazily swimming seal.

"Let's talk about other things, like you getting me and my friend a drink," Caroline said in a low tone and swung around and put her hands on her hips.

Daggett had paused to take a sip from his aged scotch over ice and nearly choked on an ice cube as he continued to watch Caroline cross the room and start playing with the buttons and dials of the stereo surround system.

Jayne watched with absolute fascination as she observed Caroline's complete control over Daggett. Caroline bent at the waist to pluck invisible lint from the pointed toe of her Gucci stilettos.

Jayne found herself shaking her head as she watched Daggett practically salivate in his designer suit as he rushed to pour Caroline a cut crystal glass of a deep amber bourbon.

Caroline leveled her gaze at Daggett as he approached her with the glass of pricey alcohol. She smirked as she accepted the drink. "Don't forget her," Caroline added, gesturing towards Jayne as she took a sip of the booze which burned down her throat and spread a slow warmth throughout her chest.

"Right away," Daggett said as Caroline took another small sip.

When Daggett went to pour another drink for Jayne, she pulled the plastic bag with the two pills that promised unconsciousness in a quarter of an hour from the confines of her glitzy clutch purse.

Daggett only had eyes for Caroline, her blonde hair that she had brushed until it held a dull gleam and the green fabric that hugged each and every one of her dangerous curves. 

She had found a satellite radio station that played love songs from baritone studs and sultry sex pots

Jayne and Daggett watched as Caroline swiveled on the polished Tuscan tile. Each lift of her hip made Daggett's salivary glands bound into overdrive and his cock started to throb in time with the song's bass.

Daggett drained his glass and reached out with his caviar consuming fingertips for Caroline. She smirked and slapped away his soft hands.

"Uh uh," she said and gave a little wag of her finger. "Why don't you sit back and relax a minute, let me give you a preview of what you paid for?"

Daggett couldn't nod fast enough, his head bobbing like an invalid turkey on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He settled back in a custom leather recliner; his eyes widened as 

Caroline moved her body in time with the sensual sounds of the new song that pumped through the high-end speakers.

While Daggett's eyes were glued to Caroline's slim thighs, Jayne casually stood and made her way to the cherry wood bar. Her hands were shaking as she poured another crystal glass of scotch and dropped the two pills into the expensive liquor.

Jayne closed her eyes and blew out a nervous breath, she squared her shoulders and brought the glass to Daggett's side. She cleared her throat and tried to put on a sexy, pouty face. The expression came easily to Caroline, but Jayne had to work at it a bit.

"I thought you could use a refill," Jayne tried in a throaty whisper. Daggett flicked his gaze to her and took the glass from her barely trembling hand. "Thanks," he mumbled as his attention returned to Caroline who had hiked her dress up somewhat.

Daggett took a few sips off his glass as Caroline stalked towards him, swaying hips and undulating pelvis. He felt a rush of blood flood to his cock as she approached him and gyrated her body right in front of him.

As Caroline moved her limbs seductively, she watched as Daggett sipped his spiked cocktail. She slowed her movements until Daggett had emptied the glass, as soon as he set the glass aside, she upped the intensity of her movements and slid her dress further up, revealing more of her supple flesh.

Jayne retook her spot, perched on the plush sofa cushion, as Caroline raised a knee to the arm of the recliner. Daggett tentatively let his hand raise and rest on Caroline's bare kneecap as she rocked her hips to the left and right before settling onto Daggett's lap.

Caroline fought a disgusted expression from filling her face when she felt Daggett's hardening cock through his tailored slacks.

"Oh, you like that baby?" she asked instead, as she thrust her hips forward and increased the pressure against his body.

Daggett could only manage a strangled affirmation at Caroline's touch and further exposed expanses of creamy young and vibrant flesh.

Daggett's crystal glass of alcohol was soon forgotten when Caroline slid her hands up her side and brushed across her breasts that were barely restrained under the emerald green glitzy dress.

As the potent drug moved through Daggett and washed across his bodily systems, Caroline tugged the bodice of her dress a little lower. Daggett's eyes widened as more of her smooth and unlined skin was bared to his lecherous gaze.

"Not until I give you permission," Caroline whispered and playfully slapped Daggett's hands away as they tried to flutter around her enticing beauty.

A sleazy grin tried to force its way to Daggett's lips as the potent drug toyed with his vascular system.

Caroline fought to not laugh as she felt Daggett's cock waver between going soft and hard, she smiled as his eyelids fluttered as his body struggled to stay conscious under the seductive pull of the narcotic.

As Daggett's body surrendered to unconsciousness, back in the sewer's makeshift kitchen, Bane watched as Rose swallowed the pill and put the glass of tea back on the counter.

Rose stirred a stainless-steel pot of brown rice as Bane's eyes roamed over her, focusing on the exposed line of her neck and her narrow waist. Bane put his hands on the counter on either side of her, he pressed his body against her, effectively pinning her in place.

Rose inhaled sharply as Bane wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back in a tight embrace.

He dipped his head and spoke low, "you will be seeing a doctor and start on a course of contraception. Until then we shall abstain."

"What about condoms?" Rose asked as she leaned her head back against Bane's broad chest.

"I will not be denied the feel of your intimate flesh by a layer of latex."

Rose's face erupted in a brilliant blush at the deep musical rumble that made her senses feel electric, she fought to not shiver in his arms.

As Bane smiled behind his mask at the trembling that moved through her body, back in Daggett's penthouse, Caroline started laughing, near hysterically, after they finally got Daggett plopped onto the bed. She giggled near hysterically as her eyes found his soft, pink cock. It was deflated, devoid of blood flow, lying flat and flaccid.

She reached out and grabbed Daggett's softened cock. "Look Jayne, it's the little cock that could," she squealed and laughed until her cheeks took on a crimson hue.

"Well, goddamn, I could sure use a drink," she announced and made a beeline for the cache of glass bottles at the beautifully customized wood bar.

Jayne gave Daggett's drugged and unconscious form a last fleeting glance before following Caroline out of the master bedroom suite.

Jayne watched Caroline pour a full glass of a clear alcohol from a cut crystal bottle and drink the contents quickly before topping off the glass.

Jayne squatted in front of a small stainless-steel fridge and a smile filled her face when she found a jar of capers and a sealed bag of smoked Alaskan salmon. She carried the salmon and other delightful and highfalutin accoutrements to the computer that would have the files Talia wanted copied.

Caroline was taking frequent sips from her glass and now dancing to a popular song that was getting airplay everywhere in Amsterdam raves to college parties.

"No, it's fine," Jayne mumbled as she adjusted the office chair and booted up the computer. "I'll copy the files, don't stress," she added under her breath to Caroline's oblivious, bee-bopping form.

Caroline let the expensive alcohol slide down her throat and fill her stomach as she turned pirouettes across the smooth tile. She left her incredible high heels on as she moved her arms through the air in time with the catchy bubble gum pop song.

She spared a glance at Jayne who was stuffing buttery crackers, slathered with a white dollop of stark crème fraiche and drowned in salmon and caper berries into her mouth.

Caroline shook her head and went back to gyrating her barely clothed limbs. "If she keeps eating like that, she's going to turn into a fat fucking cow," Caroline thought as she closed her eyes and rolled her head from side to side in turn with the music.

Jayne worked her way methodically through the pile of plump pieces of salmon, stack of crisp crackers and tangy berries as she copied each file listed on the lined paper in Talia's elegant script. She hit enter to copy the last file, as it copied, she licked the end of her index finger and picked up the stray crumbs that had fallen from the rounded crackers.  


Jayne replaced the file into a plastic sleeve and slipped it back into her brightly beaded clutch. She jumped and nearly shrieked when Caroline's painful scream sounded from the other room.

Caroline's cries turned to yowls that could nearly be heard over the pulsing music flowing from the high-end speakers.

Jayne nearly tripped over her feet in the too tall heels as she reached Caroline's side.

Jayne's mouth fell open when her gaze landed on Caroline's lower right leg that was extended at an odd angle, her eyes swept over the dark blood that spilled from the severed veins and arteries of the limb. Jayne's eyes widened at the sight of the shattered tibia and its glistening broken end, oozing protein-rich marrow.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," Caroline mewled as the pain dulled away under the rush of her body's shock response.

"No, don't look," Jayne said and pulled Caroline to rest on her back. "It's not that bad," she added and pawed the purse open and fumbled for the cheap cell phone. Jayne nearly dropped the phone and tapped out the provided number on the small square keys.

Barsad's voice answered after the first ring.

"Have you accomplished the objective?"

"Y…es," Jayne stammered and quickly added in a shaky voice that finally broke on the last syllable. "But there's been an accident. Caroline's hurt, her leg…she…"  
Barsad interrupted Jayne's panicky litany.

"Do not move, I will be there in five minutes."

As Barsad headed to Daggett's penthouse suite, Jayne tried to keep Caroline from looking down at her shattered leg. Jayne was squeezing Caroline's hand when Barsad was suddenly crouched down next to her.

Jayne locked eyes with him for a few moments as Caroline's snivels served as a constant background.

Barsad tried to keep his expression neutral as he took in the damage to Caroline's lower leg. He glanced over at Jayne, "wait here."

Barsad stepped into the hall and dialed Talia. She answered after the third ring.

"Speak."

"I'm at Daggett's penthouse, the objective has been met but one of the girl's has been injured."

"How bad?"

Barsad paused, "bad."

"Bring the girls back here."

The line went dead.

While Barsad loaded Caroline in the back of the SUV and Jayne settled next to her, back in the dank sewers, Bane brushed his fingertips along the line of Rose's jaw before excusing himself.

As Bane left the kitchen through the wanly lit hall, Talia intercepted him around the next right corner.

"It seems your progress is going well with the girl," she seethed in a reptilian hiss.

Bane leveled his gaze at Talia and for a brief moment his warm toasted chestnut eyes filled with furious anger and green fire.

The weight of his gaze took some of the wind from Talia's sails and she suddenly felt a little smaller and less buoyant. At once though, his eyes settled to a warm smolder and he answered in his mechanical melody.

"I am following your orders to the letter."

"Yes, well," Talia stammered and then found some stable footing before adding. "That girl's friends retrieved the information from Daggett's personal files but apparently one of them has been hurt. Barsad is bringing them back now, I want you to make sure that little girl in there is left in the dark about anything with her friends."

"Of course," Bane said in a low musical tone and continued down the hall.

Talia watched him walk away until he made a left at the end of the hall and disappeared from her line of sight.

She narrowed her eyes and proceeded to the area that had become designated the parking garage of sorts and waited for Barsad to return with Daggett's files and the girls.

Barsad had wound an ace bandage around Caroline's leg and crudely splinted it as the SUV bounced along the roads back to the sewers.

Jayne hovered as Barsad and one of the random men milling about carried Caroline to a low wooden worktable.

Talia walked over and plastered a wide, artificial smile on her face and put her arm around Jayne's slim shoulders. Talia had been handed the procured files and had already tucked them deep into her coat pocket.

"You performed very well my dear," Talia said in a voice that oozed fake sweetness and added. "Exactly to my specifications, you'll find your accommodations much changed. I believe you are even deserving of a hot shower."

Jayne soon found herself ushered away, she looked back over her shoulder and tried to get a fleeting glance at where Caroline was flat on her back, moaning, sweaty and pale.  


Jayne was escorted to a small steel shower, where an unmarked plastic bottle of liquid soap was waiting along with a few folded and threadbare towels. She reveled in the entire eight minutes she was able to scrub her body and stand under the hot spray of the water.

As she rinsed opalescent bubbles from the crook of her elbows, Talia dismissed everyone except Barsad and tisked as she stared down at Caroline who was writhing from the growing ache as her shock lessened.

"You had so much potential," Talia murmured and rested her hand on Caroline's clammy forehead. Talia pushed some of the Caroline's sweaty strands of hair back behind her ear with one hand while her other reached behind to the small of her own back.

Fat tears rolled down Caroline's pale cheeks and she closed her eyes when she felt Talia's cool palm press against her forehead.

Caroline's last glimpse of the world was the spider web infested rafters, pregnant with bloated, cottony egg sacs.

Caroline's pain was too great for her to recognize the sound of the gun's hammer being pulled back under Talia's manicured thumbnail.

Talia pulled the trigger and the .45 caliber bullet was expelled from the five-inch titanium barrel and passed effortlessly through the front of Caroline's skull. The bullet entered in between Caroline's eyebrows and slid through the grey matter, exiting through the base of her skull in a belch of plasma, blood and other thicker bits and pieces.

"Get rid of it," Talia called over her shoulder to Barsad and walked away, never looking back at Caroline's body or Barsad's saddened expression.


	13. Conflicting Storms

While most of the human inhabitants of the Gotham City sewer system were asleep, a plump glossy black spider was wrapping a fine layer of silk around a still fluttering moth. The grey wings of the trapped moth still tried to frantically fly free of the sticky webbing that was slowly entombing it. The shiny arachnid was eager to fill the trapped insect with its potent venom that would turn the moth's still vital and living visceral cavity into an offal smoothie.

As the grey wings of the moth were enclosed in its sticky resting place, Barsad was at the rear of one of the grey utility vehicles, wrapping Caroline's body in a plastic sheet. His expression was benign and unreadable as he tucked a strand of her thick hair behind her ear.

He folded the edges of the plastic to meet before covering her whole form with a dark green blanket. Barsad pulled the vehicle's keys from his pocket as he brought out his dark blue battered lighter and lit up a cigarette from the new pack as he shut the door and eliminated having to look at Caroline's corpse.

He gave a cough at the first wash of smoke into his lungs before climbing into the driver's seat and grimacing as he left with Caroline's body to complete Talia's orders. Barsad turned on the radio to a generic station, he inhaled slowly and held the smoke trapped in his lungs and glanced at the passenger seat and the haphazardly folded clothes that Caroline had been wearing when she succumbed to the sudden death from the single pull of the trigger.

Barsad had changed Caroline's cold form, stained with crimson lividity, from her skintight silk green dress and fuck me harder stilettos, into a pair of well-worn denim and a long-sleeved grey shirt.

As Barsad steered the heavy-paneled sport utility vehicle out of Gotham City with Caroline's euthanized carcass, Rose stirred to wake in the warm circle of Bane's powerful arms.  


Her sleep had been deep and dreamless, but she still felt the lingering pull of fatigue. Rose's conscious mind ran rampant like a wildfire as the fat, bloated sun rose high overhead the dank sewers.

Rose closed her eyes and pressed her ear to Bane's broad chest, she tried to find comfort in his steady heartbeat pounding in staccato drumbeats under his ribs. Behind his closed eyelids, images of her family began to appear upon an eggshell white background.

She felt her eyes begin to sting and fill with tears, she sniffed quietly and tried to keep her cries silent. Rose opened her eyes and nuzzled her cheek against Bane's massive chest and inhaled deeply. His musky and masculine scent filled her nose and teased her senses, but the images remained, family photos suspended in front of her eyes.

Rose pressed her lips together and stifled a sound as freeze frame pictures of her mother appeared, closely followed by her father and then the three of them on various family vacations. Large, globular tears rolled down her cheek as an image of the family trio at the Happiest Place on Earth.

Bane stirred when he felt her shoulders start to shake in his possessive embrace. He felt her hot tears land on his chest, his soft words found her ears in the dark room.

"What has upset you Margaret Rose?" he asked as he tightened his muscled arms around her.

"Nothing," Rose quickly whispered and pressed her face against the taut skin of his bare chest. She felt the twitch of his pectoral muscle under her cheek when he pulled her closer.

"Talk to me," Bane whispered and moved his hands in slow, lazy circles along her back.

Rose gave a low, quick inhale when he slipped his hands under her thermal sleep shirt and continued his fingertips in their languid circular motion. "Tell me," he whispered in a commanding tone before adding, "please."

"I feel guilty," Rose finally whispered in such a low tone, he never would have heard it, if not for his Venom enhanced sense of hearing.

"What could you have to feel guilty about Margaret Rose?"

"I can't remember my home phone number or the name of my school," she murmured against his sculpted chest.

"This is your home now and there is no need for the remembrance of irrelevant numbers or obsolete education."

His words evoked a shiver that reverberated the length of her spinal column.

"I haven't given any thought to my parents, all I've thought about is…you and…," Rose trailed off and kissed along the length of a scar that crossed over Bane's sternum.

He was able to suppress the shudder that threatened to flit through his body. Her lips along the raised flesh of his twisted scar made a flood of emotions run the entirety of his nervous system and he crushed her to his body.

"Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down," Bane said as he dropped his hands to her hips and squeezed her so hard, she knew she'd have plump grape-sized bruises painted upon her flesh.

"The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster," Bane said as he pulled her shirt off over her head. He pulled her hair free of its loose and frayed elastic band as he added.

"Because to place absolute trust on another human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with another ship." He said as his roughened palms found her soft breasts and coaxed the flesh of her nipples to harden under his touch. "And yet, love, is the greatest thing between human beings."

As Bane spoke, he tugged at the drawstrings of her sweatpants. Rose shifted in his arms and placed her palms flat against his chest before sliding them up his warm skin. She felt the various scars and ridges under her smooth palms. Rose's fingertips traced over the thick corded muscles of his shoulders and neck as her hands continued upwards.  


Rose held her breath when she let her fingers pause on one of the many straps and buckles that kept his mask held in place. She looked up and met his eyes as her fingers deftly pulled apart one of the buckles.

Bane stayed still and silent as he allowed Rose to continue unsnapping the straps that secured his mask. He smiled under his mask at her wide eyes that held a cocktail of worry and anticipatory pleasure.

Rose held her breath as she released the final clasp, she found herself frozen, unsure of whether to pull the mask free of his face.

Bane's voice washed over her and stomped about any hesitance.

"You are mine and I am yours, behind your thoughts and feelings is the ruler of known truth. In your body it dwells, and its name is self, talk to me Margaret Rose, show me what you desire."

A slow blush crept over Rose's features as she pulled the mask free of Bane's face and brushed her lips lightly across his. Bane lost his hold on any remaining resolve and crushed his lips to hers; his hands pushed her pants down her thighs and found her bare flesh.

Bane gave a low growl composed entirely of raw, feral desire when Rose moaned into his mouth. Her soft sighs and supple flesh under his hands fueled his lust as he pulled her pants and cotton panties free of her body. His breath began to turn ragged as he pushed her thighs apart and pressed himself close to her naked femininity.  


Rose arched her back against him as he fumbled with his charcoal grey pants and freed his cock that had sprung to life with the sound of need growing in her low murmurs and gentle gasps.

Rose looked up at Bane and bit her lip at the sudden question that nearly came tumbling out between her lips. She stifled her question into unintelligible syllables, but Bane recognized that the strangled sounds had started out intentional.

"Talk to me," Bane said as he positioned his rigid length against her body, she moaned with anticipation and took a deep breath before asking her question. "Do you think about me when we are not together?"

Bane looked down at her and pushed his cock into her with deliberate slowness, filling her, until she squeezed her thighs tight around his waist. "I have a hard time doing anything without thinking of you," he said after he was fully sheathed into her wet body, her slick walls pulsated and squeezed around his cock as he moved in and out of her body.  


Rose found her ability to form a coherent sentence evaporate as she was consumed with the sensations sweeping through her body with his every thrust. Bane groaned when a cold iron spike planted itself at the base of his spine and he struggled to maintain his rhythm as his need for Venom caused a fine sheen of sweat to blossom from his pores.

His hands scrambled to replace his mask and click it securely in place before he immediately returned his vice-like grip on the back of her thighs.

Sometime later, after they both had surrendered to their own release, Bane reluctantly climbed out of the bed he shared with Rose and they fell into their usual morning routine.

After Rose emerged from the bathroom, carrying with her the light scent of magnolia, Bane escorted her to the kitchen, he fought the temptation to let his hand rest on her lower back. He fought his desires in case of any extra eyes Talia might have left behind in her absence.

Bane closed his hand around the doorknob and turned to Rose, "I will see you this evening."

Rose didn't want to part ways yet and her mind worked furiously for a way to stall his departure. "What's on your agenda for the day?"

Bane lifted his hand free from the door and told Rose some of his meetings and tasks for the day before he had to force himself to leave. He knew if he didn't walk away, he was going to push her up against the wall and claim her mouth, body and soul.

"I am with you, even when we are apart," he leaned down and whispered into her ear before parting ways with her.

As he walked away from the kitchen, he dreaded his destination. Bane had omitted the first item on his agenda, a meeting with Talia on the next step in Gotham's destruction.

As he entered the control room of sorts in the dank subterranean location, a wide smile appeared on Rose's face as Erik greeted her upon entrance to the kitchen.

"Good morning Suppenmadchen." (Soup girl)

Rose's thoughts were elsewhere as she filled a large stockpot with tepid water. Erik tapped his fingers on top of the industrial coffee pot to get her attention. "Just made a fresh pot," he said when Rose's eyes focused on him.

"Do we have still have that vanilla creamer?" she asked as Erik grinned and shook his head as he walked to the stainless-steel fridge.

"I can't see how you drink this sweet shit," he said right before his phone rang. Erik set the teal blue bottle of artificially flavored everything vanilla coffee creamer before he took the opportunity to step outside and have his morning cigarette.

Rose adjusted the flame under the stainless-steel pot before pouring herself a large mug of the deep mahogany caffeinated lifeblood and dumped a hearty amount of the bright white syrupy sweetness. As she lazily swirled the spoon in the mug until the rich darkness gave birth to beige sweetness, across the sewers, Bane stood near the rear of a long metal table as Talia entered the room with an ivy green file folder bloated with loose papers.

A few of the anonymous armed men accompanied Talia and took seats at the rectangular table with its dull pitted surface. Bane sat as Talia passed a few papers around before she unrolled a blueprint of Gotham City's downtown district.

Bane listened impassively, his eyes were on Talia, but his thoughts were loud. His cranium was filled with noisy thunderclaps of confusion and lightning strikes of strained loyalty.

As Talia addressed the group of men, her eyes kept returning to Bane. She felt a growing sense that he was not giving her his full and undivided his attention. His rich caramel colored eyes, with flecks of green, were unfocused and looking past her shoulder to a map of the world. There were several red and yellow thumbtacks on the continent of Africa.

Talia quickly handed out marching orders and wrapped up the meeting, she told Bane to wait behind after the other men had departed the room.

"Have you lost focus of our goal, my father's goal?" she asked in her beautiful dulcet tones and walked the length of the table until she was within touching distance of him.

"Have you forgotten your purpose?" she added icily.

"No, it has not been forgotten," Bane replied automatically.

Talia clenched her jaw, "Do you really think that little girl loves you? Just because she let you take her innocence, if it hadn't been you, it would have been any other man that was capable."

Under his mask, Bane's nostrils flared, and his anger spiked as Talia continued with her jealous litany.

"Test her loyalty, leave the kitchen unattended and the door open. See how much she cares for you when there is a clear way out."

Talia turned and walked briskly from the room, her shoulders rigid and her spine ramrod straight.

Bane watched the empty doorway long after Talia had departed with her ugly envy.

As Bane banished Talia's words to the recesses of his mind where they would await their resurrection, Talia practically stomped a fiery path to Jayne's upgraded cell.

Jayne had already risen for the day and was devouring a plate of waffles that were drowning in sickeningly sweet syrup, topped off with a large misshapen pat of yellow margarine when Talia opened the door to her room.

Jayne looked up and gave a cautious smile when Talia first entered her line of sight. She was filled with substantial relief and licked a bloated drop of syrup from her plastic fork tine when Talia's face erupted into a believable façade of serenity and kinship.

"How are you my dear? I trust the new accommodations are making you happy," Talia stated and waited patiently while Jayne took a long sip of orange juice before answering.

"Yes, very much so," Jayne said quickly, bobbing her head, putting on the coat of penitence as Talia sat down next to her on the genuine mattress that had taken the place of the institutional looking cot.

"Are you enjoying your new work assignment?" Talia further asked and plucked a plump raspberry off of Jayne's plate and popped it into her mouth. The berry's juice coated her sharp tongue and stayed hidden behind her well-practiced sweet smile.

Jayne nodded furiously; she was genuinely happy with her new job of being an office assistant of sorts. She spent her days filing, faxing and shredding documents in any number of languages.

"You don't want to see things change, do you?" Talia asked. Jayne was already shaking her head before Talia finished speaking.

Talia nodded her head and gave an approving smile before speaking. "Good, I have a promotion to offer you, provided you perform a task for me," Talia said and paused briefly to gauge Jayne's preliminary reaction before continuing.

"If you perform one little job for me, I will give you an opportunity of a lifetime."

Jayne's eyes grew wide and she put down her fork. "What are you offering?" she asked with near breathlessness.

Talia smiled. "Gotcha," she thought to herself and outlined the reward.

"I own a flat in downtown Gotham, 24th floor that overlooks the whole city. If you do the one thing I ask, you can live there and function as the house sitter at the same time. I'll give you a personal driver and security personnel. You will be given a list of places you can drive to, but you will have a generous allowance and access to online shopping. Your job will be to monitor a set of surveillance monitors and take extensive and detailed notes on what you observe," Talia said and waited as Jayne absorbed the tempting offer.

"What would I have to do?" Jayne asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Your friend Rose," Talia started and immediately had Jayne's full attention. "If you can get her to escape with you, I will give you everything I mentioned. I will also entertain requests you might have."

"Can I pick my security personnel?" Jayne asked.

Talia tilted her head, her lips turning up into a knowing smile. "You may have Israel."

Jayne blushed and scrambled for words to cover her embarrassment. "What's my pay and allowance per week?"

"Five hundred dollars a week," Talia said with no hesitation.

"How about a thousand?" Jayne quickly countered.

Talia arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. "Rose has to escape of her own free will and completely leave the building into the vehicle you will steal the keys for," Talia said and added. "Are you worth a thousand dollars a week?"

Jayne nodded and sat up straighter. "Despite my family name, I am a straight A student and I was always known as one of the best people to borrow notes from. One of my teachers used my notes to make a study guide in chemistry."

Talia nodded thoughtfully. "Stall a bit longer, money means nothing. Gotham will soon be nothing but grey ash, bits of bone and crumbling concrete."

"Okay," Talia said and immediately began to unroll the details of her plan. "I will assign you to the kitchens for an entire week, during that time you will convince Rose to escape with you after you steal the chef's key ring."

Jayne nodded and looked down when Talia extended her hand with its manicured nails, painted a soft pink. "If you fail," Talia said when she grasped her hand and added. "I will put a bullet between those beautiful eyes."

Jayne's face bled to white, but she nodded stiffly and spoke with false confidence. "We'll be escaping by Friday. I want my first paycheck in advance."

"You'll have it," Talia said as she stood from the bed and added before she left on a cloud of designer perfume. "Your first paycheck will be waiting in the glove compartment of the van you will lead Rose to on Friday."

Jayne waited a few seconds before returning to her cooling breakfast and coagulating sticky syrup. She slurped down the rest of the juice and wiped her mouth with the coarse paper napkin.

As Jayne leaned back and stretched deeply before heading to the control room, Erik and Rose were discussing their top favorite films. So far, they disagreed on every film genre.

"Okay, what's your favorite war movie?" Rose asked as she peeled and chopped a yellow onion.

Erik leaned back against the counter and continued drying a stainless-steel cookie sheet. "I'd have to say The Deer Hunter."

"Oh, I do like that one but mine would have to be Full Metal Jacket."

Erik considered her before he shrugged, "I could see that," he conceded and then grinned and went back to drying another identical pan.

The rest of the day passed like any other day, Bane returned for Rose in the late afternoon and carried the plastic tray to their shared quarters.

Across the sewers, Jayne settled down with her own dinner tray and outlined a plan on a yellow tablet of lined paper. She was already planning on her first night in the penthouse alone with Israel, she had that advance paycheck already spent in her mind on lingerie, alcohol and Michelin Star takeout.

Barsad returned late in the day and went directly from parking the SUV to a close to warm shower.

Across Gotham City at the bar in The Four Seasons, Bruce Wayne and Miranda Tate each sipped at their extra dry martinis.

Miranda let Bruce feed another couple cocktail, she wanted him to take her back to his mansion and bring her to his high thread count linen covered bed.

Later that night as Bruce fucked her, her orgasm found her in a hurry as she found herself extra wetly stimulated by the thought of destroying Rose.


	14. Crushed, Breathless and Beloved

Night came and went, the morning sun hung bright in the sky as Rose stirred awake in the strong warm cocoon of Bane's embrace. She stifled a deep yawn and shifted in Bane's arms until she could press her face to his chest, she inhaled deeply and captured his scent through the taut fabric of his shirt.

A small smile pulled at the corners of Rose's lips as the deep woodsy scent of his warm skin teased her senses. She turned her head and pressed her ear against his chest, she closed her eyes as the steady drumbeat of his heart filled her ear.

As Rose tried to capture a few more minutes of sleep, across the sewers, Jayne was just climbing out of bed and was immediately greeted by her growling stomach. She looked up at the sound of the key sliding into the lock. Jayne's expression was soon stained with nervousness when Talia walked through the door with a peacock blue plastic tray.

"Are you confident that you'll be able to lure your little friend away?" Talia asked as she set the tray down on the edge of a short wooden table that doubled as Jayne's desk and writing surface.

Jayne nodded, still unsure that she'd be able to speak.

Talia nodded approvingly and gestured for Jayne to eat. She wasted no time in pulling apart a triangle of wheat toast that had been slathered with golden margarine and glossy clumps of strawberry jelly.

Talia was in her full Miranda Tate ensemble; she had brushed her hair until it fell in bountiful full waves around her shoulders. Her smart crimson suit smoothed along her curves and was cut low enough to expose her smooth décolletage.

Jayne listened as Talia reiterated that she had just the week to get Rose to escape and greatly emphasized the consequences upon failure.

Jayne swallowed a mouthful of grapefruit juice while Talia's mind strolled back through the kinky memories of the night before with the eccentric billionaire and his thick ridged abdominal muscles as they frolicked wetly between the sheets.

As Talia brought herself back to the present and continued to direct idle chatter at Jayne, who enthusiastically finished a third strip of crisp bacon, glistening with grease from the butchered swine, in the kitchens Erik filled the glass coffee carafe and measured out twelve close to level scoops of the ground French roast.

He whistled as he moved slowly around the kitchen, he had been up late drinking with some of the anonymous men who spent their days welding. The quintet of men had worked their way through two large handled jugs of vodka. Erik pinched the bridge of his nose at the growing ache that was beginning to fill his skull.

He checked his phone's messages as the coffeemaker percolated and soon the warm scent of fresh java filled the air.

As Erik scrolled through and replied to messages from his brother in New Zealand, the coffee carafe slowly filled as Jayne followed like a loyal lapdog behind Talia as they headed in the direction of the kitchen.

Bane and Rose were also on their way to the kitchen after their usual morning routine. After Rose had cleaned up in the bathroom and pulled her hair back into a tight bun, they walked side by side through the chilly concrete halls.

Bane glanced over as Rose covered a deep yawn and stretched her arms overhead, his gaze immediately went to the exposed patch of skin from her shifted layers of clothing. His fingers itched to trace along the smooth line of pale flesh peeking from under her grey and olive colored thermal shirts.

Under his mask, Bane's nostrils flared as he caught the light scent of Rose's lavender lotion. His inky black pupils dilated, and his unconscious mind opened their floodgates, he soon found himself unable to keep his eyes from roaming over the rest of her body.

Rose stopped when she glanced over at Bane and found his eyes boring into hers. His rich toffee gaze was heavy with need and she bit back a surprised squeal when he closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms and lifted her off the ground.

She didn't have time to ask many questions as Bane pulled open a nearby door that opened to a storage room crowded with wire shelves and cardboard boxes.

"Forgive me Margaret Rose, I can't part ways with you quite yet," Bane said in a ragged musical whisper as he kept her in his arms and crossed the room.

Rose stifled a gasp when her back met the cold, concrete wall as she felt Bane's hands quickly move over her body and unzip and tug her pants down past her hips and thighs.

She wrapped her arms around his neck as Bane dropped a hand to the inside of her naked thigh.

"Won't Erik be mad if I'm late?" Rose whispered in near panic before her words trailed off into sighs of lustful intelligibleness as Bane brushed his fingertips against the front of her plain panties.

Bane smiled behind his mask at Rose as she tipped her head back when he tugged her panties to the side and began to rub slow lazy circles over her rapidly swelling clit. His invisible smile turned heavy with lust and gained a dangerously sharp edge as he felt her body respond and grow wetter under his every touch and caress.

"Please," Rose whispered so low it almost didn't resonate as a spoken word with Bane.

"Please what?" Bane replied as he slid his finger slowly inside her, he kept his eye contact with her as he moved his hand to let his thumb continue to caress her clit.

"Please….make me yours," she said and arched her back to increase the contact he had with her body. Bane gave a feral growl and shifted her in his arms until he could unzip his cargo pants and free his cock which was straining against the zipper.

"Say it again," Bane said as he moved until he was just lightly letting the head of his cock brush against her wet, delicate folds.

"Please make me yours," Rose said and pulled herself closer to him. She gave a low, satisfied moan as Bane slid his cock into the center of her warm femininity, he matched her exhales as he sheathed his entire length into her.

"You have been mine from the start," Bane managed in a strangled mechanical groan as he gripped the soft flesh of her hips and continued to move in and out of her. His rhythm began to grow erratic as he lost himself in the feeling of her body squeezing tight around his cock.

Bane tightened his grip on Rose's hips until his fingernails made bruised crescent moons appear on her soft flesh. He pressed his masked face to her neck and inhaled hard to capture her scent though the metallic vents.

"Now you can go to work," Bane whispered against her skin and Rose chuckled as an embarrassed flush filled her face. "Can I first go use the bathroom to clean up again?"

Bane's wordless response was to pull her into a suffocating hug, she felt simultaneously crushed, breathless and beloved on the same breath.

A short time later, after Rose felt sufficiently presentable, Bane escorted her in the direction of the kitchen.

Talia was speaking with Erik behind the closed kitchen doors and wasn't visible to Bane or Rose.

As they drew closer, Rose's eyes widened when her gaze found Jayne. She jogged towards Jayne but nearly stumbled and stopped short when the kitchen doors opened and Talia emerged, beautiful behind her Miranda Tate disguise.

Talia's eyes narrowed when she noted the satisfaction swimming through Bane's deep warm eyes the shade of rich coffee. A deep frown creased Talia's flawless skin when she observed the weight of Bane's gaze as his eyes only saw Rose. "He loves that useless little cunt," Talia thought bitterly and forced a benign but cold expression on her face.

"You are looking well," Talia said in a bitter, close to lukewarm greeting towards Rose.

Rose looked down and examined the tops of her leather boots.

Talia chuckled delicately, borrowing from the laugh she had developed for Miranda. She continued speaking as she gestured at Jayne, who had remained still and quiet, trying to blend into the grey, damp walls.

"Jayne will be joining you for a week in the kitchen, you will train her in the daily job duties."

Rose nodded without raising her eyes and shoved her hands deep in her pockets. She desperately wanted to step closer to Bane to feel his comforting and powerful presence.

Rose fought to not look back at Bane as she took tentative steps around Talia and through the kitchen doors. Jayne followed and paused when Talia's hand fell on her shoulder and whispered words meant only for her ears.

"Remember, you have one week, or you will find the rest of your life short and painful."

Talia's voice was too low for Bane to detect from the distance he was standing but not for Erik who had been standing near the door when it opened. He had noted Rose's pale expression as she walked past him into the kitchen and waited for Jayne.

Erik frowned when he watched Rose wring her hands in worry, he narrowed his eyes as he overheard Talia threaten Jayne.

Before Jayne got within earshot, Erik whispered in a solemn tone for Rose to be wary. "Passen Sie heraus für dieses eine Suppen-Mädchen auf, (Watch out for that one Soup Girl.") Rose smiled and tried to fill it with false confidence and exude a carefree attitude, she failed but Erik didn't press her for more of an explanation.

Jayne looked between the two before letting her gaze roam the rest of the kitchen that now sparkled as much as it could, possible only because of Rose's presence.

Before Rose was completely comfortable around Erik, her first visits to the kitchens often found her cleaning the metal food storage carts and industrial appliances. Her work was necessary and appreciated in Erik's eyes. He had decided very soon after Rose's arrival that she held merit and every reason to retain her life.

Word had trickled through the proverbial gossip grapevine that one of Rose's friends, had been killed by Talia. Erik shook his head as he tried to remember the young girl's name, 

"Carrie…. Carina….Carol…." he thought as he looked over to where Rose was showing Jayne around the storage, prep and cooking areas.

Erik opened his mouth to speak when Rose's voice sounded first.

"Are ya going out for a smoke and to call your sister?"

Erik found himself frowning to cover a grin that threatened to split his face as Rose turned and addressed Jayne. "Every Monday morning at 7:15, Erik goes out for a cigarette, or three and calls his sister Elizabeth in Dusseldorf."

By the time Rose was finished outlining the first of Erik's smoke break filled Monday morning, Erik was smirking and walking out to call Lizzie.

Jayne's mind was going a million miles an hour as she was feeling good when Erik was soon out of earshot as she cleared her throat and tried to launch into her well-practiced script. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her dark pants, nervous energy making her fingertips tingle and the small hairs at the base of her neck, danced with jittery anticipation.

"Rosie are you okay? Have you been hurt?"

Rose looked over from where she was loading potatoes into a large ceramic bowl, she passed Jayne a matching bowl before she answered.

"I'm being treated fairly, I've been knocked around a bit, but I'm okay now," Rose said as she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

"Who hurt you?" Jayne pressed.

"Oh, it was awhile back, I don't remember all the faces down here," Rose said nonchalantly and hefted the heavy bowl onto the counter and began to rinse off the oblong potatoes.

Jayne narrowed her eyes and tried a different approach. "What kind of food are you given? Where do you sleep? Are you in a cell with anyone?"

Rose began to peel one of the potatoes from the mountain of starchy goodness as Jayne continued her interrogation before Rose could even draw a breath to reply.

"What have they been having you doing? Who is that scary fucker with you? Is he like your captor?"

Rose was so thankful for Erik's warning, she continued to lob deflections back towards Jayne and nodded at some of the news story as she added colorful commentary.

As Jayne reluctantly picked up the second metal peeler and selected a misshapen spud from the rinsed pile, outside in the hall Talia's frown had returned when she saw the brilliant lust and wanting plain as day in Bane's eyes left in Rose's wake. What had bothered her the most and made her press her lips into a thin line, was the need that still remained in Bane's dark, liquid chocolate glossy orbs.

"You like that pampered little bitch, don't you?" Talia spat with venomous fury and stomped towards Bane, closing the distance between on her spiked shiny leather heels.

"You're not going to like her at the end of the week, I'm reassigning your little whore. You need to remember your place and who you pledge fealty," Talia hissed and with each word tapped a manicured fingernail against his chest. The glossy nail tip tapped against his armored vest.

Her explosive fury receded, and anger began to brew as Talia continued with her hateful litany. He could detect the scent of her mint toothpaste wafting through his mask as anger distorted her beauty into the morbidly grotesque.

"You will be on a flight in two hours for a pickup job in South Africa," Talia stated as she glanced down at her diamond and platinum watch before continuing.

"When you return you will be able to focus your mind, in your absence I'm going to eliminate all erroneous distractions and cut the dead weight."

Bane remained silent as adrenaline flooded his system and his deeper and more rapid inhalations forced the Venom serum to flush through his body and leave his fingers and toes tingling.

He glanced to the right and the left. As soon as he found the halls deserted, he began speaking in a low deadly tone.

"I've always my supposed fate. One day there will be associated with my name, something frightful, of a crisis like no other before on earth."

Talia's false confidence faltered as Bane's right hand shot out and closed around her neck. Any sound she would have hoped to have made were stopped under his sudden immovable grip, her face turned several colors of violet as he spoke in the same even melodical voice.

"There has been the most profound collisions of conscience, decisions evoked and shook me to the core about everything I was told to believe," Bane stated in an empty tone as he tightened his grip on Talia's neck and walked forward until the concrete wall stopped his progress.

Tears ran down Talia's cheek and clear mucus flowed from her nose as she clawed at Bane's massive forearm. Black dots clouded her vision as Bane continued his musically cold lullaby.

"Everything before had been believed in, demanded, sanctified," he said as he closed his other hand around Talia's neck and lifted her off the ground. Bane pulled her closer and slammed her back against the damp wall. "I was honored to know I would die for you one day, found comfort but you changed all of that," he musically seethed.

The back of Talia's head made contact with the walls as her breath dwindled to the lower region of her lungs that housed the final tidal breath. Her skull spilt and her glorious waves of hair became saturated with the hot flow of blood from arterial spray and internal hemorrhaging.

"I am not a man," Bane said in a melodic whisper as Talia's life left her body in a final hiss and warm urine soon flowed and soaked from beneath her designer skirt.

"I am dynamite," Bane stated as he released Talia's neck and directed his empty syllables at her well-dressed, piss-soaked, bleeding still-warm postmortem form.

For nearly ten seconds after Bane had let Talia's form collapse to the floor in a lifeless heap, he stared down at her. He reached for his phone and dialed a number from memory.

Within minutes, Barsad appeared and sprinted down the hall towards Bane and Talia's still corpse. Barsad's eyes moved over Talia before he met Bane's stare.

Barsad had a roll of black plastic tarp in his right hand, Bane's phone call had said body detail which meant a "no questions asked," corpse disposal.

Barsad didn't utter a single syllable about the body he began wrapping up in the shiny tarp. Inside Talia's cadaver, blood cells deteriorated and burst as her thick ropy arteries filled with coagulated sludge, stopped dead in their tracks when she ceased to live.

As Bane tied the end of the plastic tarp into a snug knot, across Gotham City, eccentric billionaire Bruce Wayne awoke in his high thread count linen covered bed. He stretched and rolled over, his hand found the other side of the bed empty and he opened his eyes to see that Miranda was no longer lying naked next to him. His eyes alighted on a long chestnut strand of hair across the stark white pillowcase, he pulled the hair free of the fabric and wrapped it around his index finger.

Bruce smiled as he climbed out of the bed and began to do a series of push-ups and abdominal exercises. He was already anticipatory of his eight o' clock dinner date at the Radisson.

As Bruce let his mind replay the previous night's extracurricular events, back in the sewers Rose and Jayne began to slice the washed and peeled potatoes into large, uneven chunks.

Erik's sister was extra chatty and rattled about a slew of graduating nieces and nephews as well as the unusually sunny weather. Inside the kitchens, Rose turned up the burner under the stockpot and moved her attention to the bright blue industrial bag of carrots.

Rose and Jayne both looked over at the television when the game show was interrupted by a "Gotham City News Breaking Report."

Both girl's breathing slowed as the morning news anchor Sandy Howard appeared behind the news desk and had a practiced solemn expression fixed into place as she began to speak into the camera.

"Gotham City police have identified the body of a young woman pulled from the aqueduct as seventeen-year-old Caroline McAdams. The body was spotted by two teenagers early this morning."

Jayne's face drained of color as she remembered the last time, she had seen Caroline alive, she found she couldn't drop her gaze from the screen as Sandy Howard continued with the breaking news report.

"Preliminary reports issued by Gotham's Medical Examiner state that Miss McAdams is the victim of foul play. Miss McAdams family was unavailable for a comment, they have been hosting a nightly candlelight vigil. Channel Eight will report further information as it becomes available. Any inform…."

Rose started to protest when the television screen blinked off and turned to see Erik holding the matte black remote control.

"You two do not need to be watching this," he said with authority despite Rose's protests.

Erik called Bane after he got Rose to stop arguing and Jayne devolved into a mute lump and perched on the edge of a metal stool.

As soon as Bane entered the kitchen, Rose immediately began questioning him. "Did you know?" she asked. "Did you know Caroline was dead, do you know how she died?"

Bane started to raise a hand for her to slow with her interrogative litany. "Yes. I heard your young friend was dead after the fact. Her death was quick."

"Who killed her?"

In the space before Bane answered, Rose noticed that he was holding her thick fleece-lined jacket. She continued to watch as he remained silent and held her coat out towards her.

"Will you accompany me on a drive Margaret Rose?"

Rose looked over at Jayne who looked like a pretty broken doll with a frozen porcelain expression of fear. She looked to Erik who gave her an approving nod. "Okay," Rose said to Bane as she accepted her coat and slipped her arms into the navy-blue sleeves.

Rose walked next to Bane down the dim hallways with random water drops splashing upon steel railing and staircases.

She felt a resurgence of the earlier fear she had held for Bane, she shuddered involuntarily and mentally berated herself for immediately thinking irrational thoughts.

"Wait," Rose said as she gripped his forearm and added, "please."

Bane looked down at Rose, bundled up in her warm layers, he knew the soft flesh beneath all the thermal and fleece would be smooth, supple and willing.

"Tell me the truth, did you have any involvement with Caroline's death? Did you have any knowledge of it before it happened?" 

Bane leaned down so that their eyes could meet without her staring upwards at his formidable frame. "I swear to you Margaret Rose that I did not know she was going to be killed and discarded."

Rose searched his eyes; she only saw the warm depth of his passion and affection for her. She slid her hand from his forearm, down over his wrist to slip into his massive palm.

As they continued through the sewers to the fleet of unmarked vehicles, across Gotham City, Bruce Wayne frowned as he reached Miranda Tate's voicemail for the third time. He checked his messages again and saw that she still hadn't responded to anything he had sent.

Bruce dialed Miranda's office number and reached the same secretary who still had the same answer as she had twenty minutes previously. As Bruce left another message about their eight pm dinner plans, Bane navigated one of the grey trucks out of the sewers and on a route that seemed familiar to Rose.

She was content to just look out the windows, she squinted at the bright light that filled the cab of the truck. Bane was also content with his own silence, his mind replayed Talia's face as she succumbed to death on perpetual repeat in the front of his head.

He looked over at Rose as she leaned her head back against the seat and watched the trees grow thicker and the roads more uneven. Bane was able to let the image of Talia recede to his unconscious mind for a while when he saw Rose's face fill with happiness at the old broken-down sign on the side of a now barely traveled road.

"I thought this time, you should avoid walking near any water," Bane said with a gentle teasing tone as Rose couldn't help but smile at the Magic Land sign.

Bane pulled the truck to a halt in the abandoned parking lot that used to be filled to capacity with mini vans and station wagons full of excited children and tired parents.

Bane and Rose walked towards the creaky metal turnstiles of the park, back at the sewers in the underground kitchen, Erik watched as Jayne's expression shifted with her rapidly returning thoughts.

Erik cleared his throat and poured the young girl a cup of coffee and splashed a healthy amount of a warmth inducing clear alcohol. He laid a hand gently on the girl's shoulder and handed her the steaming mug of potent java.

"Drink this, it will make you feel better."

Jayne was too shocked by the news report to argue, she sipped at the spiked coffee as Erik tried to think of something comforting to say to the quiet girl. His mind kept getting clouded by wondering what the exchange of words had been between Talia and the scared girl. Jayne's fear was about to end and be replaced with happiness as Israel had heard a rumor that Talia was out of the picture. He moved swiftly through the hallways on the way to the kitchens with a backpack containing cash and keys.

As Erik tried out a few generalized inquiries to Jayne's state of being, Bane and Rose walked down the nearly deserted amusement park midway. Rose smiled before she was aware when they rounded a corner and her eyes found the abandoned Carousel of Wonders.  


Rose skipped to a black horse caught in mid-stride, its long legs off the ground, the once vibrant and lustrous paint was faded and peeled from the elements and childish vandalism.

"This one was always my favorite," she told Bane as she ran a hand over the rough surface of the saddle, feeling the individual pits in the once protective lacquer coating.

Bane climbed the rickety steps of the broken-down carousel. "Why did you favor this one?" he asked walking towards Rose. As he spoke, he stepped around puddles of vomit in varying stages of drying and the scant remains of stale piss.

Rose shrugged and pointed to the faded wreath of plastic flowers, "probably because those flowers used to be purple."

Bane settled a broad palm on the carousel horse's back and traced along the uneven surface as he watched Rose stare down the desolate midway of the park and shield her eyes from the sun.

"Bane? Who killed Caroline?"

Rose's voice took Bane by surprise, she kept her back towards him as her gaze traveled along the littered ground leading to Magic Land's Ferris Wheel. Splintered and wooden sticks that had once boasted golden and deep-fried corndogs and crumpled paper napkins lay in the shadows of the once bright and glittery ride.

"Do you trust me?" Bane replied and Rose turned to look at him, her answer was already out of her lips before she had stopped turning.

"Yes. Please tell me who killed Caroline."

"Talia."

Rose swallowed hard, "that's what she's going to do to me someday."

"No, she will not," Bane answered quickly but Rose was shaking her head. "It's just a matter of time. I've seen the way she looks at me, she hates me."

"I killed Talia."

Rose found she couldn't remember how to breathe for a few seconds as Bane's startling admission filled the air.

"You killed her?"

Bane nodded and walked towards her, he took slow steps, unsure of how Rose was processing his words. "I killed her because she was going to take you from me, and I cannot allow that to happen. That's why I need you to carefully think about your answer to what I'm going to ask you."

Rose nodded and let her eyes gently close as Bane lifted his hands to her face and traced along the soft skin. He spoke as he traced an index finger along her cheekbone.

"I'm leaving this country after fulfilling the plans to bring Gotham its long overdue death. I want you at my side, I need you at my side Margaret Rose. You are what I dreamed about in a pit of despair, devoid of humanity. I saw your face in my mind as I traveled between the land of the living and dead."

Rose opened her eyes to look up at Bane, his warm eyes met hers with their battling waves of caramel and sweet toffee.

"Will you stay with me for the rest of your life Margaret Rose? You will want for nothing."

She didn't need to articulate an answer as she fumbled at the straps of his mask to feel the press of his lips for fifteen uninterrupted seconds.


End file.
